TPoM II: One Shadow Stranger
by MechanixAngel
Summary: Jay Richter is being held captive by his own military overseers, and they seek information that he doesn't have. His father has become a legend among the Resistance for seemingly rediscovering Minecraftia, but he was M.I.A. when Jay was still a kid. Now, it is Jay's turn to fulfill the Prophecy of the First Realm, uniting Earth and Minecraftia truly for the first time in years.
1. Celebration Day

**H****ello once more, faithful readers!**

**The day has finally come after just under a month of waiting: the release of TPoM II: One Shadow Stranger! I hope you all enjoy, and I don't have much to say right now because I left everything out there in the A/N for Ignition Point which I released a couple days ago.**

**However, one thing before I begin: this story is kind of hard to understand. Before every chapter begins there is a quote from either a song, a video game, a TV show, or maybe even a real person that kind of corresponds to the theme of the chapter. As soon as this ends, assume that you are being told the story from the main character's interrogation cell in present time. Once the little thing pops up in italics with the date and stuff, then it is the main character telling a memory from his interrogation cell. Within these areas, paragraphs that are all italics are the interrogator intervening, and once there is a line break, it switches from the memory to present time and back again if necessary. Its kind of confusing, but hopefully you guys will get the hang of it.**

**And now, let the story commence!**

**Synopsis**

If you're reading this story, then you have most likely already finished reading the one that predated this, The Prophecy of Minecraftia, or TPoM for shorter and more applicable uses. If this is referring to you as a person, you may skip this section. However, for my many new readers, here is a minimum rundown of the events predating this book. Or at least, the events that you are required to know. You'll find out more later.

In the year 2014, Markus 'Notch' Persson retakes the seat for main developer of the popular video game Minecraft from one of his employees, Jeb. Notch does this because he believes that he has found a way to harness energy by trapping a large amount into an isolated system to the point where it is so close to bursting that it creates an infinite amount of applicable uses. Notch turns the energy into electricity, and his experiments begin.

Over the next few years, Notch goes over a huge overthrow of Minecraft, adding features such as the well-received Aether mod and much larger, operational sailboats. Along with these, he takes away many things from the game as well, most notably the Endermen and strongholds. The End is still written in the games code, but it is impossible for anyone to access it without hacking, and it is locked down in ways that the rest of the game isn't within code.

This all builds up to Notch inviting three thousand contest winners to Mojang's headquarters in Stockholm, Sweden, for the grand unveiling of the world's greatest ever invention. Nobody not attending the meeting knew what it was, though, as on activation it released a wave of electricity (some would say magic) that caused the bodies of all humans within the city to mysteriously disappear. Along with this, there was a curse brought upon the people in Earth: an inability to create or form new ideas, which included inventions.

Seeing an opportunity later that year, the infamous hacking/terrorism group Anonymous, with thousands of followers spread out across the entire globe, launches a cyber-attack that cripples every government in the world, and in the chaos, releases gas attacks on thirty eight of the world's major cities. As Anonymous begins taking control of many governments and militaries, a lone few struggle to repair themselves before Anonymous strikes them: the United States, Canada, Great Britain, Germany, and France.

The war between these countries, the Resistance, and the countries under Anonymous' control erupts as both sides compete to gain territory to try and fend off the other side. Conflict erupts, but neither side can obtain the advantage because of that same curse Notch inflicted that restricts humans from creating new ideas or inventions, leaving the war at a standstill because of no new weapon ideas, no new strategies, no anything.

Two hundred years later, the Earth has become an apocalyptic wasteland. Every land has been militarized, or being fought for control between the two sides of the conflict. A lone United States Army soldier, Sergeant Dylan Richter, struggles for survival through a series of unfortunate events happening to his squad, and ultimately comes out alive with a secret message: the war criminal Markus Persson was sighted by him twice in Stockholm and gave him a folder with information inside. Not for Dylan, not until the time was right. As no one believed him, Dylan finished his service and went to go live in a civilization camp.

At the same time, it is revealed that the invention that Notch created was a portal to another universe that he generated: one with four Realms, and the first one, Earth, shrouded from his people. He was a god, along with his brother Herobrine, and were successful in establishing a new world, a perfect world for Notch to live in.

But trouble has broken out in Minecraftia as Endermen come back into the fight, killing people or even worse transforming them into Endermen themselves. As the shadow people take over hostile mobs to do their bidding, a prophecy is revealed by an Oracle: one man who receives the last name Glowstone in the naming ceremonies, a ritual performed by people in Notch's civilization once they are fourteen to determine their last name and job, will have the power and will to fight off the Enderdragon. It will be his destiny, and so be it: it certainly was.

Alex Glowstone, a newborn hero, watched as on the night after his naming ceremony, armies of mobs destroyed his city. He was left with nothing. But over the course of a month, he began his own civilization: a city named Novum Eboracum, one inhabited by the survivors of the world in the coming apocalypse of Minecraftia. He grouped together a group of seven friends to make the Imperial Battalion, a squadron led by him to take down the Endermen once and for all.

After many trials and triumphs, the size of the group ultimately grew to twelve, and the group was sent to the End, a long forgotten dimension that served as the home of the Endermen and the lair of the Enderdragon that controlled them. Through shocking revelations and an epic final battle, Alex finally was able to defeat the Enderdragon and find out something else: unlike the other people, he now knew that Earth really existed, and how it was all of his kind were from.

In other news, Alex found out that he was different: he was computer generated, which was why he was so special from everyone else. He had been created, his genes harnessed from Notch and his girlfriend Emily before Notch had unveiled his invention, but Emily had chosen not to come to Minecraftia. So Notch was Alex's father.

As civilization blossomed in Minecraftia and Dylan Richter awaited a new kind of life on Earth, the Enderdragon bided its time. It was still alive in a sort of way, and all that it needed was the perfect opportunity to strike.

It came with a man named Jay.

**PART I**

**DISCOVERY**

_I'm not a prisoner, I'm a free man!_

_~The Prisoner by Iron Maiden_

The instant that I woke up, I realized how badly my head was throbbing. It was annoying, like someone was constantly trying to bang a hammer on the inside of your skull to try and break it. My memory was foggy, but I certainly remembered key points. The giant figure of the Enderdragon flying above me. The faces of Tyler and Sydney. And most importantly, the droves of helicopters surrounding Wrigley Field as I waved my friends off into the dugout to escape. "They want me!" I had shouted, standing with my gun at my side as they hurried into the depths of the building, "Just get away with the intelligence!"

The Resistance had caught up to us, and now I was in captivity. I had figured that I would be at some point, but I had almost had my hands on what I had wanted for so long. The one thing that my father had left me to do when he died. And now I was stuck here, and the Resistance would interrogate me to try and find out what I knew about the Enderdragon. There was just one problem. I hadn't gotten to see inside of the folder, so I didn't know where it was. I was doomed.

Now that I was able to think, I realized how stiff my back was. I turned over, realizing that I was on a metal bed. There was simply two blankets, one that I was laying on and one that I had been under, and a pillow that my head rested on. It was comfortable, but it didn't help any of the throbbing. Besides, it was hard to be comfortable when you knew your terrible fate.

I stood from the bed, taking inventory of the room around me. The walls were simple stone, and there was a chair up against a small wooden table in the center of the room. It was probably about the size of a normal bedroom, but it was mostly empty. The bed was in the corner, and the front wall was a black glass window. It was one way, of course, so I couldn't see anything. In the left corner of that wall was a large metal door, and there was clearly no point for me to try and force it open.

I could also see a small speaker in one of the corners that two walls and the ceiling intersected in, the one directly above the door. I realized that I was just standing there aimlessly, and it would've looked pretty weird to anyone watching. Of course there was someone watching, after all, I was in an interrogation room of all places. Still, I squinted distastefully at the window. It felt weird to be in a room as secluded as this.

"Captain Jay 'Hawkeye' Richter. Resistance United States Navy DEVGRU Team Red Dawn leader. Enlisted in Resistance for four years since April 2246. Went M.I.A. on November 17th in Stockholm, Sweden, while in pursuit of an Anonymous HVT. Now found by the Resistance today on December 21st, subject for interrogation on the subject of Codename Enderdragon," the speaker said in an electronic voice. It was static, so someone was using a voice modifier on the other side.

"No kidding," I muttered, frowning in disgust. This was going to be one hell of a few days. And the worst part was, I didn't deserve any of it. The entire time, I had been fighting to try and save humanity, and yet I was being accused of working against it. That was just what happened in war, I supposed. You couldn't trust anyone with anything.

"Sit down," the voice continued, and I followed it's command and pulled out the metal chair out from under the table. It was cold steel, freezing my fingers on first touch as if it had been resting in a bucket of ice. With no hesitation, I sat down and scooted the legs up against the table. I remained staring at the black window, trying to see if I could see at all. Maybe it was just tinted really well. But a couple seconds proved that it was indeed not, and I wouldn't be able to tell what the body language of the people behind it, or who it even was behind it.

There was silence now, and I presumed that whoever was back there wanted me to talk. Obviously they wanted me to talk about the actual events that had led up to this point, but I was not going to make it that easy for them. After all, as I remembered, I had gotten to see inside of the folder that detailed the intelligence that the Resistance wanted for mere seconds. There was no way I could recount the locations, or even anything that important from just three seconds or so.

Knowing this, I spoke first, directly about that subject. "Look, I don't know where the Enderdragon is. I know that I had the folder in my hands, you probably have it on tape. But I didn't get to read any of it," I explained, knowing that that wouldn't cut it with my interrogators.

"Hawkeye, we do have camera footage, and you opened the folder," the voice countered.

"Well, based on the amount of time I had it open, do you think I would've remembered anything written inside of it?" I scowled, rolling my eyes. The argument that my interrogators were making was perfectly legitimate, but that didn't save me from being frustrated by it.

"So you're saying that you don't know where the Enderdragon has taken refuge on Earth? All we know is that it somehow got out of your so-called Minecraftia along with armies of mobs that are spilling out of Stockholm, and our weapons don't do anything against them. So you better think hard, Hawkeye, because you're all we've got. The war between Anonymous and the Resistance doesn't matter anymore thanks to this, so think hard!" the voice protested, shouting in anger.

"I don't know, dear God, I swear!" I yelled back at it, starting to sweat in discomfort. Was it just me, or was the room getting a lot warmer with every second that passed by?

A deep breath that was made unclear with static rattled out of the speakers, and I waited patiently for the people behind the glass window to make their next move. "Fine then. Where are the others that you brought out of Minecraftia? If you don't have the folder, we know that they do, and we want to know exactly where the Enderdragon is so that we can lock down the area."

That was a question that I did know the answer to. That didn't make it any easier for them to get the information out of me. "There are three possible locations, and I sure as hell will never break on that one," I spat, staring threateningly at the window to show that I wasn't kidding. "And you might as well not even try to find them without knowing where they might be, because there is absolutely no way that you'll be able to find them that way." A stab of pain went through my side as I remembered Tyler and Sydney again. I couldn't let them be found, or Prae, or Alex, or any of them, really.

The silence from before returned, and I heard the sound of typing through the speakers. The sound stopped and the voice spoke again. "You do realize that we'll do anything. We'll search all of Chicago, make a global manhunt of these people. We can have you killed if you really don't know anything. It doesn't make a difference to us."

"Me neither," I said bitterly, standing once more from the metal chair that was pressed against the wooden table. I turned away, about to make my way back to the bed as I realized how tired I still was. Without facing the window, I spoke once more. "Can I have something to call you, whoever you are? I don't like having to refer to someone as just someone."

There was a pause as the voice thought. "Cobalt," the voice responded shortly. "Cobalt."

"Cobalt," I repeated under my breath, sitting down on the metal bed. Surely a codename for someone in the Resistance, but I couldn't think of anyone that had had that name assigned to them. So instead, I pulled the covers over me and closed my eyes.

It felt that I hadn't slept for long when I heard the voice again. "Wake up, Hawkeye," Cobalt said, arousing me from my slumber. My eyes hurt, probably from a lack of sleep, but I didn't want to test these Resistance guys. Surely they would have me killed, and if I didn't cooperate on something as simple as that, it would be sooner rather than later that I was executed.

I stretched my arms above my head out of habit, loosening my body for whatever was to come in the following hours. I'm sure that going back to bed without being told to was not scoring me any points with Cobalt, so I hurriedly got seated and glared at the window. I had developed a strong feeling of despise for that window already, as it shielded those who squeezed information out of me.

"So what's up for today?" I yawned, sitting in the metal chair once more. "Torture, interrogation, or am I going to have to listen to a lecture on the consequences of what I've done?"

"The second one," Cobalt said simply. "Since we have no lead on where your allegiance stands or where the rest of your party is, we're going to have to get the information out of you."

"That isn't going to be so easy," I joked, feeling at ease all of a sudden. It seemed that I had bought my friends some time if I wasn't dying today. Any progress was enough to make me smile.

"We've realized that already, unfortunately," Cobalt responded, disregarded what could be viewed as an act of disrespect to him. "So we're going to go from the beginning. Your promotion."

"Celebration Day. What a great idea, glorifying your prisoner as you try and interrogate him," I said smartly, barely able to suppress another smile. Celebration Day was an unofficial term that people had given to the day that a person was graduated to the rank of Captain in the Resistance. Mine had been just before my mission in Stockholm that had gotten me into this mess.

"And what exactly do you want to know about it?" I queried, folding my hands in front of me.

"Everything."

_Celebration Day_

_Lieutenant Jay 'Hawkeye' Richter_

_November 14__th__, 2246_

_14:57_

_Rome, Italy_

_Earth_

The day had definitely not been any ordinary one. Well, really, that was saying the bare minimum. But it had gotten interesting just before three in the afternoon. That was when we blew up the Coliseum. Yeah, you heard me right.

"Set!" Corporal Samuels shouted, walking back from the last block of C4 that he had placed. We had been in charge of five columns on the northern side of the ancient building, and now that they were all set, our squad was ready to demolish the building.

We weren't doing it for just any reason. Rome was a major battleground at the moment, and the Coliseum was Anonymous' major hub. With it destroyed, then there would be a very low chance of Anonymous being able to maintain any sense of control on Rome. With a firm grip on this city, the Resistance would have a good opportunity to capture all of Italy.

I got my radio out from my belt and spoke into. "This is Hawkeye, we're all set to blow charges. How about you guys?" There were five other squads that surrounded the building, all loading C4 on a total of thirty columns. The supports were all key points, and since all of the columns would come down at once, it was highly likely that the entire thing would collapse.

The other squads all radioed in that they were indeed ready. Each group had four people in it, but there had been heavy casualties as we fought through the city to get to this point. Samuels and I were the only ones left in our group, and although I technically outranked him, we had treated each other as equals since the two of us had become the last ones in our squad. Thank God he had been the one carrying the explosives, or they would've wasted a lot more time looting whoever had died with the C4 in his hand. Though it might have been ugly, the mission was going successfully.

"Overlord, this is Hawkeye on the ground, all teams are set with explosives in position, are we cleared to destroy the Coliseum?" I asked through my radio, and waited. As soon as I nodded, Samuels would flick the switch and the entire building would come down. At this point we had backed up about fifty yards away.

"Hawkeye, you have the green light. I repeat, you have the green light," my radio responded, and I tilted my head slightly. Explosions suddenly rocked the air, the deafening noise drowning out anything else that the Overlord could have possibly said. Smoke blew out from the building in all directions, and I saw the rocks crumbling down.

The smoke blew over Corporal Samuels and me like a heavy cloud of fog, blocking any sight that I could have possibly had. "Move up! Everyone's hostile!" I shouted, hoping that Samuels might have heard me. And so I pushed forward from where I had been, a thermal sight equipped to my SCAR-H assault rifle so that I could still aim through the smoke. I checked it. There were no signs of life within thirty yards in front of me. Knowing that, I continued forward.

The sound of explosions had now been replaced by an eerie quiet with nothing audible except for the crackle of flames. At last, I walked into a pile of rubble that was taller than me, and the smoke began to clear up. I checked my thermal sight, looking forward. There were two men walking toward me, and they were not indicated friendly by a certain chip that was in the body armor of all Resistance members. They were enemies, and there was no reason to hold off.

I squeezed the trigger, firing at the Anonymous soldiers. A body scrambled up just behind me. Once I had dropped both of the soldiers, I turned to see Corporal Samuels there. Soot clouded his dark skin and body armor. "Samuels, you looked like you jumped into a pile of ash," I commented.

"Look who's talking, Lieutenant," he replied, flashing his white teeth at me briefly. "So what's the plan now? I want to get out of this hellhole as soon as possible."

"We just have to make sure that the structure is down and all that remains is the camp that stood within the walls. And according to my eyesight, that's exactly what's the case," I responded.

I picked up my radio again. "OK, Overlord, looks like it's down. Call in the anti-personnel run," I spoke into it. We looked up to the sky behind us. There were five planes flying toward us now, slowly descending to the level of the building. Bullets began firing, and explosions rang up from in front of us. The strafe run had obliterated the camp supposedly. Our job was done. Now we just had to get out of enemy territory and back to an area of Rome controlled by the Resistance.

The fact of the matter was that even though the Coliseum had been destroyed, Corporal Samuels and I had the hardest part of the operation coming up: trying to escape Rome in the midst of all of the Anonymous soldiers. We had literally stirred up the hornet's nest, and it was going to be quite an effort to try and make our way out. The two of us had about two miles to get to a Resistance controlled area, and it was quite simple. The course was simple, with just one street to make our way down. However, that one street was in the heat of the ongoing battle.

The two of us advanced forward to the point that we had left the heavy layer of smoke behind. The city of Rome had always been beautiful, and now, even amidst a war on it's streets, it looked elegant and pretty. Of course, the piles of debris weren't exactly a good addition to the architecture, but they didn't change it that much for the worse. And besides, you couldn't really admire all of the corners when you knew that people trying to kill you could be hiding behind any one of them.

Once we reached the first row of buildings, I ducked behind a fallen pillar from one of the buildings. It had severed down the middle so that one side was leaning against a stone facade of a building while the other side lay evenly on the ground, making a perfect spot for cover. I reloaded my assault rifle after having shot two men before with a fresh magazine. "You ready?" I asked.

Corporal Samuels nodded shortly, readying his own assault rifle. "As much as I'll ever be," he said, and we vaulted over the stone pillar. There was more rubble on the other side, but it was just littered on the ground, not enough in order for us to be able to take any cover behind them. So instead, we would have to make our way across without any obvious cover. I didn't like the prospect of that.

Luckily, my eyes were extremely good at picking up the slightest movements, and the hand moving on top of one of the roofs on the next intersection was a dead giveaway. "Sniper!" I shouted, sprinting off to the building on my right as Samuels went to the one on the left. A bullet hit the ground right where I had been standing, clearly a high caliber one as it made the rubble and dust shower everywhere within five feet of that spot. I was already climbing into a window to the inside, though.

Another bullet hit the wall just beside the window on the outside wall of the building that I had climbed into, but I was safe on the inside. I lifted my SCAR-H once more and aimed through the thermal sight up at the other roof. The Anonymous soldier had the upper half of his body exposed from my angle in the building across the street. The small red dot in my sights hovered over his chest, and I fired four bullets at him. They hit him cleanly, and the glowing red mass in the infrared sightline slumped backward once more behind the stone cover.

I jumped back out over window to the street, and I saw Corporal Samuels follow suit from the opposite building. "Move up! We have to get out of here as soon as possible. I don't like the feel of this street," I called out to him, and we kept going side by side. It was too quiet. I had expected a lot more force than a single sniper, but there appeared to be no one else. It would be stupid to assume that to be final, as most likely there were more enemies camping inside buildings or something.

As it turned out, that was exactly the case. About halfway down the street, just a mile away from Resistance territory, I heard the sound of spinning rotors. There was no mistaking the sound of a helicopter. And since our anti-aircraft squad member had been taken out on the way to the Coliseum, there was no way for us to shoot it down reasonably. "Get off the street!" I said hurriedly, and Samuels followed me into an old Italian restaurant.

The shadow of the helicopter passed over the street, and I stayed down behind a table. I thought that we were safe in the building, but in mere seconds, shooting began from the other side of the restaurant. I popped my head out over the wooden table and saw about five Anonymous soldiers behind counters and bars, all holding submachine guns and firing at us. I picked one off before I ducked back down under the table to avoid being shot myself. Samuels was crouched over next to me.

"Tangoes at twelve, ten, and two o' clock!" he alerted me after taking a quick scan of the room. I saw a bullet hit a glass salt shaker that ended up spraying white spray all over the table. Once more, I popped up above the table and took out another Anonymous soldier, and Samuels did the same. We were no longer outnumbered. That didn't mean that our fight was going to get any easier.

Maybe it could, though. I pulled out a frag from my belt and pulled the pin on it and held it in my hand. If I waited too long, it would blow up right in my face. One second, two seconds... Then I threw it over to the counter that two soldiers were hiding behind. It didn't take long for it to explode, shattering tables and killing the last two enemies in the room with us. I stood again, the immediate threat neutralized once more. "Let's keep moving."

After that, there were no more incidents. We reached the end of the street with the Resistance checkpoint, where a group of six men guarded the entrance to the Resistance area of Rome. I showed them my identification card simultaneously with Corporal Samuels. The man in front took notes that we had once more reached friendly territory, not acknowledging that two of our four man squad hadn't made it back. That was war, I supposed, but it was sad that people could be disregarded.

The two men that had died were good men. There was Corporal Sanchez and Corporal Biden, both of them good fighters throughout the time that I had been in a squad with them. There were many memories that I had of them-

_"Really, that's not important. What we need to know is how you became a captain. We need you to remember everything. So don't waste time telling us about dead people and think about everything, think about where the Enderdragon is!" Cobalt said harshly._

Well, honestly, Cobalt, I had feelings for them. And for the last time, I don't remember! So if you want to hear me recount what is important, then don't interrupt!

_"Hawkeye, remember who the prisoner is."_

I am not a prisoner! For God's sake, I will not be a prisoner! Maybe I'm trapped at the moment, but this is just an interrogation thing. So let me talk.

_"You screwed up pretty badly, Hawkeye. I will interrupt your story, as you call it, whenever I want because I need all of the details possible. So don't backtalk to me."_

How about you stop talking to me like I'm a three year old?

Anyways, Corporal Samuels and I continued into the Resistance camp. The activity was everywhere as people polished weapons and got ready for their own missions. There was no spare time to be spent for anyone stationed in Rome at the moment due to it being an avid battleground. Five planes were flying back from over the Anonymous territory of Rome, the same ones that had just made a gun run over the Coliseum.

"I'm going off to the mess hall. Good work today, Lieutenant," Corporal Samuels told me, giving me a firm handshake. Our eyes locked for a moment, a silent grievance of the two men in our squad who had died that day, the ones that _you _don't want to hear about.

_"Continue, please?"_

Yeah, right. As Samuels walked off, I heard someone call my name from my right. I turned to see Admiral Johnson walking over to me. He was basically my boss, the head of my section of SEAL Team Six squads. "Lieutenant Richter!" he called again, approaching me. He didn't wear combat armor, but rather a suit, as if he were going to a dinner party or something.

I turned toward him and grasped his hand to shake it. "Admiral, what in the world are you wearing?" I grinned, greeting him. He broke his hand away and smoothed out his jacket as if making sure that there were no bugs on it.

"I've got a conference with some other Navy leaders, basically going over the statistics of the ongoing battle here. Not a big deal," he replied, and he began walking toward the airfield. "I was hoping that I might be able to catch you before I fly off to Manchester."

"Oh?" I said, surprised. "What exactly for?"

"Well, first of all, good job not dying on the job today. Two casualties out of your squad are minimal losses. We extracted Sanchez and Biden, they were both good soldiers that you led," he said.

I hung my head sadly, remembering my close friends. "Yes sir. I'm glad you said so."

"But speaking of you surviving, that was a good job leading the way to the Coliseum, it was a successful job. Thanks to your heroics, we'll be able to take Rome once more," he congratulated me.

I scratched the back of my head uncomfortably. I hadn't noticed how my hair was starting to grow back out from the stereotypical buzz cut for the armed forces. "It wasn't just me, sir..."

"Yes, but you led them all," Admiral Johnson smiled, now crossing the airfield toward an armed transport jet. "So in turn, happy Celebration Day."

"Cele-" I started, but couldn't finish the words. They had seemed to stick to the top of my mouth, and I couldn't speak for a couple seconds. "You're promoting me?" I queried once I regained my senses.

"Yes, and you deserve it. You're being reassigned as well, you'll be leaving for Sweden on a transport jet in about forty five minutes. Good work, Captain Richter." With that, we had reached Admiral Johnson's jet, and he climbed up the boarding stairs. I waved slightly, and then turned around once the jet's doors had closed. I was off to Sweden. Good job, Captain, I thought.

I didn't realize that I was grinning back in the present. I suppose that I had been so invested in telling the story of my Celebration Day that I had started smiling about the sweet memory. Admiral Johnson was such a good guy, but that had been the last time I had seen him. I assumed that he wasn't dead, but a month had passed, so who knows? Personally, I hoped that he wasn't, considering that he was such a nice person. I had no control over that, though.

"There isn't much else to tell about the Celebration Day. At about 17:00 I got on the plane and I flew off to Sweden. Nothing much else to it," I finished, biting my lip nervously. Maybe me smiling as I was interrogated wouldn't be scoring me any points either, but then again, it hadn't been my fault. It had just happened, and it wasn't that big of a deal.

"What happened once you reached Sweden, and where were you?" Cobalt asked, and I shook my head angrily.

"Why are you asking me these questions?" I blurted, staring at the black window. "You're Resistance, all of your records already indicate where I was up to the next day! If you already know the answer, then what is the point of hearing it from me again?"

"Hawkeye, there's more to it all than that. We need to hear it from you so that we know that you admitted it. Its a legal thing, I guess," Cobalt explained, sounding less and less sure of him or herself. The thought of legalities actually playing a part in my interrogation made me laugh.

"Do you really have to worry about what's legal and what isn't? The Enderdragon is on the loose, and you're trying to make sure that I can't call up my lawyer and sue you over something meaningless," I chuckled, not caring that it was not the smartest thing to do to your interrogator.

A heavy sigh filled with static emitted from the speakers. "Whatever. Some people just don't understand. But that's my point, Hawkeye, the Enderdragon is on the loose on Earth and you aren't cooperating with us at all."

"Oh, so this is about cooperation now?" I sputtered. "Is this all some sort of game to you now?"

There was a short moment of silence. "Well, technically, Minecraftia _is_ based on a game."

That was the last straw. I stood so suddenly that the metal chair got knocked over by my legs as they found their footing. "Look, Cobalt, I have no idea what your problem is, but my life is not just some sort of game for you to figure out. I'm not a pawn, and neither is Sydney, and neither is Tyler, and if that is all you want to use me for, then you can go to hell!" I yelled at the window.

If I was nothing but a pawn in the Resistance's schemes, then there was no way I would cooperate. The thought that I might do that was laughable. A game. A pawn. That's all I was.

I'm not a prisoner. I shouldn't be being interrogated here. I'm a free man!


	2. Burnt Ice

_You know what they say: if you're going to f*** up, you best get it out of the way early!_

_~Alex Mason, Call of Duty: Black Ops 2_

My shoulders were heaving in anger as I stared at the window once more. Cobalt didn't understand my situation at all. He didn't know what I'd been through, and what I'd lost, and where I was standing now. And yet I would never be able to see exactly what the reaction was from my interrogator. Never. And that was what made me angry.

"You'll never know what it's like to be me! You probably have never worked in the field, and you're just being fed information and questions to ask me like some moron. Nobody cares about the truth anymore, everything is a lie. Just because I was gone doesn't mean that you can't trust me," I protested, getting more and more frustrated. Was this all the rest of my life was going to be, trapped here and protesting to some guy behind a wall?

I forced myself to calm down. There was some effort in trying to self-realize that trying to fight my case by yelling at my interrogators wasn't going to cut it. Once my nerves were gone, I lifted the chair up from the ground and propped it back up against the table. Then I sat down in it, collected my thoughts, and breathed slowly. I was going to have to be as calm as possible if I wanted to somehow escape this room, legally or not.

"Are you done with your spectacle?" Cobalt asked, his voice as static as always. The electricity in it made it almost sound like he was speaking through a sheet of iron, making the consonants metallic. It was weird, not like any voice amplifier that I had ever heard before. Even amidst my thoughts, though, I bowed my head in response. "Yes."

"Then we can continue. If we're to search your entire memory, then we'll have to go over everything important. I don't care what we have to do, but we need to spark your memory so that you can figure out where the Enderdragon is. We need you to remember the folder's contents. You have to, Hawkeye," Cobalt continued. I bit my lip, now out of habit because of nervousness. I didn't like going through my memories vigorously. It made me feel self-conscious, and that was something that I _really_ didn't like.

There was no point in trying to persuade him that I really didn't know anything about the Enderdragon's whereabouts on Earth. It seemed that the faster that I came up with an answer for it that somehow turned out to be true, the less time I would spend in this cell. So there was nothing to do except for going through my memory like he asked me to.

"Fine, then. What's next?" I muttered, basically admitting defeat for my cause. I still believed that whoever Cobalt is was acting like a selfish idiot by keeping me locked up in here, and that all of my friends, the only other people in the world who knew how to defeat the Enderdragon, were in danger without my help.

There was a sound similar to the shuffling of papers emitted through the speakers. In fact, I was pretty sure that that was exactly what it was. "After you were appointed Captain by Admiral Johnson?" Cobalt questioned.

"I was able to rest for a day," I told him, leaning back in my chair casually. "And then all hell broke loose."

_Burnt Ice_

_Captain Jay 'Hawkeye' Richter_

_November 16__th__, 2246_

_23:16_

_Danderyd, Sweden_

_Earth_

The helicopter floated down from the sky above toward the launch pad that I stood on, waiting for it to pick me up. The sky was pitch black at this point, and the only way that I saw the helicopter was because of its red blinking lights that gave radar workers an idea of who was flying in toward them. It also helped me see the chopper approaching.

Just because it was the middle of the night didn't mean that I couldn't see outside. In fact, with the heavy snowfall, I could see the ground around me pretty well because it was covered by two inch deep snow. The moonlight reflected off of the white crystals to make a surface that reflected the light, almost like a mirror, but I couldn't see my own reflection in the ground. I didn't want to see my reflection, anyways. I didn't even look human with the body armor that I was currently suited up in. Juggernaut armor, they called it, but I just thought it to make me really slow and harder to move my legs. There must have been at least a hundred and fifty pounds of the stuff on me.

The helicopter touched down on the snow white surface of the landing pad, and I strolled over to it, my L86 LSW light machine gun in a firm grip between my two hands. The door on my side slid open, revealing a man a couple years older than me, but still in his twenties. "Captain Richter, right?" he asked, and I nodded. He was in juggernaut armor as well, but he didn't have his helmet on yet. He stretched out a hand and I took it, lifting myself onto the helicopter. He sat down in an empty seat facing two others with their helmets off, and beckoned for me to sit down next to him.

"You can take that helmet off, you know. It impairs you're hearing, and you do want to be able to listen to introductions," he explained as I laid my gun on the floor. I then lifted the helmet off and placed it on top of my gun.

"Why do we even need all of this armor? I just got informed that I needed to suit up, so I hope that you guys know what our mission is," I told them, sliding the door shut as the helicopter once again began to rise up into the night sky. The small window showed heavy swirls of snow in a whirlwind as we were lifted off of the ground.

The man on the right across from me cracked a smile. His hair was cut extremely short, almost to the point of being bald. His light brown eyes stood out from his dark skin, as did the white teeth he showed with a smile. "All the rooks don't know what they're up for the first day. We don't know if they're going to chicken out or something," he explained jokingly.

I raised my eyebrows. "What do you mean, are all of the new guys scared of doing what they have been for a long time?" The others looked at the man who had just spoken, as if to say, 'what are you doing, giving away all the tricks of the trade?'

"Anyways," said the man beside me, breaking the silence, "Welcome to DEVGRU. I'm sure that you know you're already been informed you're with us now, but not the specific squad you're in. Here we are, I guess. DEVGRU Hit Squad, or just plain Hit Squad if you're part of the team, which you are now."

"Three minutes out. Why don't we just give him the sitrep on what we're doing today?" the man diagonal from me said. He had short black hair that barely hid any of his forehead, as opposed to my brown haircut that almost hung over my eyes.

_Can you stop talking about your hair and continue your explanation of the mission?_

"Right. Captain Richter, I'm Major Dalton, and if I must say so myself, I'm basically your new boss. No more of the Admiral Johnson guy," the man sitting next to me said.

"I haven't even talked to that guy in four months," the guy diagonal from me said. He leaned closer, extending his hand. It was completely covered in black body armor anyways, so it wasn't that big of a gesture. "Captain Teague," he said shortly as an introduction.

"Captain Richter. I suppose that I'm the rook to you as well?" I introduced myself, grasping his hand and giving three shakes.

"You'll always be the one," he joked, cracking a smile.

"Exactly. You follow my orders if you don't want to get yourself killed. Understand?" Major Dalton told me, and I nodded. "And to finish up introductions, that's Captain Lewis," he continued, gesturing toward the African American man across from me. He raised a hand in short greeting, leaving it at just that.

"Down to business, then. I've only got two minutes and a half to brief you, so let's make it quick. We're flying in to a Danderyd nuclear power plant that was reactivated a couple months ago and is currently housing experiments for Anonymous to try and find new ways to duplicate nuclear energy in their own main bases. Our job today? Well, it's quite simple," Major Dalton explained, faltering off at the end.

"Blow the entire place to hell," Captain Lewis commented.

"Um, I suppose that's exactly what we're doing," Major Dalton shrugged, as if that it wasn't that big of a deal. "We have very specific assigned places that we're planting charges as to not blow up a reactor from the core, as that would make our chances of getting out alive zero. They're already slim enough, after all. If we stray of course from the start though, we'll be overwhelmed by enemies."

"That's why we've got these," Captain Teague confirmed, tapping his arm against the heavy juggernaut armor that he was equipped with. "And by the way, we've got one minute. Get your helmets on, or you won't make it very far."

As we put our helmets back on, I dared to ask the question that they knew was on my mind. "Do you guys do stuff as crazy as this pretty often?"

I lifted my light machine gun once more, looking over at the others for a response. It came from Captain Lewis as he slid open the helicopter doors, letting in a large gust of icy cold wind. "All the time, Captain."

The helicopter was coming to rest just outside of a nuclear power plant, the ground blanketed in snow that kept falling from the sky. The rotors of the helicopter drowned out any other noise as the metal landing gear touched the ground for a short second. The four of us leapt out of the helicopter, coming down to the ground heavily because of our juggernaut armor. Major Dalton proceeded to the front of our group, walking away from a large forest of trees. "Follow me, and you won't get your ass kicked. Now let's move out!" he shouted.

"Hoorah!" the other two yelled back at him, but I stayed silent. Hoorahs were 75th Rangers in the army; it was basically their battle cry. So why were Navy SEALs shouting the exact same words? It didn't really matter, so I proceeded behind the others as our helicopter lifted off without us, moving back in the direction that we had come from.

From the trees, we came over a short stretch of land that was no larger than a department store parking lot. It was grass, I supposed, but was completely covered in snow, so there was no way to be quite sure. Once we reached the end of that stretch, our path clearly marked by a countless amount of footsteps in the snow, there was a grated metal walkway that acted as a bridge over some sort of walkway under us. The bridge wasn't covered in snow, for it would just fall right through the small holes once it reached the cold metal. It made walking a lot easier for us, proceeding to a set of double doors with a logo emblazoned on both of them. It was a single man, black and white, surrounded by a globe of sorts. The one odd thing about the picture was that where the man's head should have been was a question mark.

Captain Lewis stepped up to the doors, running his gloved hand over the markings. "Anonymous' logo. This is definitely the nuclear plant we were looking for," he alerted us, trying to glimpse inside through the blue glass doors. While he did this, Major Dalton stepped to the right side of the doors where a small keypad was embedded into the metal wall of the exterior of the nuclear power plant. He typed some numbers in it and it flashed red. He retried with a different set, and it blinked green. The doors that Captain Lewis had been looking at automatically slid open to reveal a very large room with nuclear reactors.

"We'll stand out a little bit from the scientists here, as you can probably tell," Major Dalton explained to us, waiting outside of the open doorway before we entered. "Stay close to the rest of us and you'll be perfectly fine. As long as nothing goes wrong."

With that, he turned and stepped into the building. There were four large nuclear reactors in here in the four corners of the room, with walkways around them on all sides as well as catwalks about halfway up them. "This is the east wing, our main target," Major Dalton explained to us, looking up at the many scientists inspecting things up on the catwalks. "Shoot everyone you see that isn't one of us. When I say protect me while I'm planting explosives, protect me. When I saw follow, you follow. If I say to get out of here without me because I'm dying, you do it. Do you all understand?"

"You bet. Alright, let's plant the explosives on the reactor to our left," Captain Teague confirmed, pointing to the reactor just next to us. The metal structure was being supported by a large cement base which made walls on the sides, in turn making special corridors for Anonymous scientists to make their way through. We turned into the one nearest to us, lifting our guns to make sure that there were no soldiers in this specific corridor. As soon as we fired a single shot, the entire room would become a madhouse of people trying to kill us.

Major Dalton led the way out of the main room and in between the facility and the reactor base. Captain Teague was right behind him, while I was third and Captain Lewis rounded out the back of our convoy. It was slow moving in the heavy juggernaut suits, but halfway across the corridor Major Dalton stopped in his tracks. "Here," he muttered, reaching into a pocket of his armor and taking out a complex looking explosive. There was a block of C4 in the middle of it, plus identical red strings that stuck out of either side of the explosive that had their own, smaller blocks of plastic explosives

"How exactly does that work?" I queried, standing guard as he strapped them onto the cement base of the structure. My iron sights were trained on the direction we came, just in case any guards tried to stop us from planting the intricate explosives.

"They're activated by a single button, well, all of them connected to the specific switch are anyways. At least, when they're turned on. Once the explosives are set, you can wait as long as you'd like before you flip the switch, we activates the two outside blocks first," Major Dalton explained to me while he worked. The blocks of C4 stuck right to the cement surface as usual, although it was cool to see how they seemed to defy physics. "The last one goes off about a second after the other two. It makes the most central explosion."

"In other words, you get more bang for your buck," Captain Lewis commented, staring down in the other direction from me. "Contact. Angry scientist alert."

There was indeed a man in a lab coat hurrying toward us, a beaker in his right hand and his left diving toward his pocket. There was no doubting that he was reaching for a gun. "Stop where you're standing!" he exclaimed pulling out a small pistol. It was a standard issue Makarov, absolutely nothing against a pack of four juggernauts. "You aren't supposed to be here, and what in the world are you doing? Setting off explosives could trigger a meltdown throughout the facility!"

"Hey kid," Captain Teague interrupted, lifting up his own Five Seven. "That's exactly what we're trying to do, so good luck trying to stop us." With that, he fired two bullets, one into the Anonymous man's chest and one into his head, and the scientist fell over backwards with no resistance. Just like that, two gunshots had gone off and everyone knew we were here.

Major Dalton connected some wires together on the central block of C4 and then flicked a small switch on it. "It'll be a while before they are able to disable the explosives. It's an intricate wiring system, and if they make a simple mistake, then the whole thing goes boom right in their faces!" he shouted to us over the alarms that had begun to wail and the footsteps of guards rushing toward us by the dozen. We were going to have company.

I turned a little worriedly toward the others. "And if they _do _set off the explosives prematurely? I mean, that can't exactly be good, can it?"

"It doesn't matter who sets off the explosives; us or them. But either way, once they go off, we have ten minutes until a meltdown throughout the facility," Captain Lewis responded, growing a little agitated by staying in this one corridor for this long. I agreed with his body language. If we stayed here much longer, we were sure to get overwhelmed.

The question seemed to radiate between the entire group without actually being asked aloud, like a thought that just seemed to transfer between all of us somehow. It was finally Major Dalton that addressed the subject. "Captain Richter, for a few moments stay here and guard the explosives that we've already planted. We need them locked down before we can move on to the next reactor in the facility," he ordered me, so I planted my feet and stared down the iron sights of my L86 LSW and waited for any enemies. "We'll be just around the corner planting an identical set on the other side of this reactor."

"Roger that, Major," I replied, crouching down to reduce my body sway. That was a factor in aiming, and it could get really annoying. In a position like this, I would be able to get better accuracy on target on any enemies that came around the reactor. Considering the circumstances, the amount was surely going to be high.

The other three kept walking down the other hallway. I heard somebody fire bullets of their light machine gun, but only a few. There must have been another scientist on that side of the reactor, or the Anonymous guards had reached us. Sure enough, in my sights a man wielding a submachine gun appeared, sprinting toward me with it raised. His body was mostly covered by black clothing as to keep his identity masked, but that didn't help it at all in combat. A short squeeze on part proved more deadly to him than an entire clip worth of bullets had been to me in my juggernaut armor. I had felt about three hit my chest, but they bounced off without doing much damage. It was going to take a lot more than that to kill me.

A lot more appeared to be approaching, however. Around the corner were about five more men, and I fired more. Each shot left a large bullet shell on the ground to my right, and soon enough they were scattered all around my feet. The gun was getting the job done, though, and I continued to fire shots at the Anonymous guards. It was going well until I squeezed the trigger and found that my magazine was empty.

Light machine guns took a long time to reload, which proved costly for me. I wrenched out the circular magazine and threw it aside, jamming in another one while turning a small switch on the gun. A man darted around the corner with a large gun with a very recognizable gun locked over his shoulder. The missile protruding from the launcher was a sickly green, and it shot through the air at an alarming rate. An RPG.

It whizzed past me and hit the cement wall just behind me, creating a giant explosion that set off the plastic explosives on the wall just behind me. The force of the blast knocked me over, bathing me in red hot flames. My skin was protected because of my heavy armor, but that was exactly the problem. The armor was literally fried in the heat, and once the explosion had gone off and I was laying on the ground helplessly, I threw off my helmet. The glass was red hot, and it wouldn't be doing much to protect me anymore.

Footsteps hurried back from behind me. "How in the world did the explosion go off already?" one of the Navy SEALs shouted in surprise, though I couldn't tell who's voice it had been because of a heavy ringing in my ears. Another explosion went off from down the other corridor around our reactor, so I assumed that the explosives on the other side had just gone off as well. Hopefully no one had been harmed in the explosion, or at least, no Resistance soldiers.

"Captain Richter, what the hell happened to you?" I heard another voice say as someone stripped off my juggernaut armor. I stepped out of the leggings once they had gotten to that point and stumbled over to the cement wall opposite of the reactor. My vision was blurred, but the metal structure of the nuclear reactor seemed to be leaning this way. Maybe it was just that my eyes were swirling around, manipulating everything instead of processing things normally.

Finally, I somewhat regained my senses, and that was when the realization of what had happened hit me. An RPG had set off the explosives prematurely, and my juggernaut armor had been rendered useless because of the destruction. I picked up my gun off of the ground, the rubber grip warm. Any more exposure in the heat of the fire that had burned out my juggernaut suit and the rubber what have begun to melt. Now I was left but nothing except for my black undershirt, which clung to my body, and long sweatpants. My combat boots were scuffed, but I would still be able to use them. "Doesn't matter now. We have less than ten minutes to get out of here before a meltdown commences, and I have a sense that the scientists around here aren't going to make it easy," I explained, lifting myself up over a small pile of concrete wreckage that blocked the easiest path back out. "So let's get to the extraction point."

"There's going to be a Vector fighter jet with a cargo bay that'll load us on and fly us away, but it was originally going to pick us up at an exfil point that we won't be able to reach in time. I'll call Overlord to get the Vector to redirect onto the roof of this wing of the building, but it's going to be really close," Major Dalton responded, making his own way over the rubble.

"C'mon, we don't have any time to spare!" I shouted, getting the group to begin walking faster behind me. The lobby was much emptier than it had been before as the Anonymous personnel raced to try and get out of the facility before a meltdown, and I made my way over to a stairwell embedded in a wall to hurry and try and get to the roof as soon as possible.

Behind me, Major Dalton was barking requests into his radio frantically. "I don't care, unless you want us to get radiation poisoning you have to send him in now! The plane has enough armor, anyways." It wasn't until we actually reached the stairs on the other side of the giant room with just six minutes left that a look of relief washed over his face. He put his radio back inside a pouch in his juggernaut armor (which luckily for him was still intact). "The Vector is two minutes out. It won't take long for us to get up to the roof, will it?" he queried.

"Personally we're about one minute out with this armor on. I never want to use it again, you can't walk faster than five miles per hour with it," Captain Teague commented as we ascended the stairs up the catwalk. Those were the last words he ever spoke. The bullet hit him cleanly in the side of his head, smashing right through the glass part of his helmet and shifting his balance so that he fell over the metal railing. It was a thirty foot drop to the cement floor, and he had already taken a shot to the head.

"SNIPER!" Captain Lewis shouted, and indeed there were Anonymous snipers on the catwalks below us. There was no time to count how many, though, as we reached the hatch to the roof just as a bullet hit the wall next to me. It made a loud ping noise, high pitched and quite frightening. But just like that, we were on the roof.

"Anyone else hit?" I asked, panting to catch my breath. Major Dalton collapsed on the snowy rooftop, breathing even more heavily than me. It was hard for him to try and make out what he was trying to say, so instead he pointed down to his right leg. There was a hole in his armor, a small chink in the armor that must have been opened wider by a bullet piercing it. There was blood there as well, but it was not able to actually spill out because of the distance between the skin and the edge of the armor… Sorry, it's kind of gruesome. Do I have to talk about that specific subject right now?

_Whatever you want. Just try to make it quick. Tell us what is important, or at least go through everything quickly. We don't have much time, Hawkeye._

Fine, but Major Dalton was injured. That was important, and Captain Lewis knelt down next to him. "Richter, take his radio. You need to be up to date with Overlord if we're going to make it out alive," he ordered me, having more experience as a SEAL to be rendered as authority in a sort of way.

My gaze drifted to the cloudy sky, though. "I don't think that that is going to be a problem for us," I said shortly, watching the black plane flying closer to the ground against the black sky as it extended landing gear and settled down next to us. The pilot, visible through the glass dome in the front, dropped out of his seat and opened the cargo door. "Get in now, I want to get the hell out of here as soon as humanly possible," he stated, but was shot in the chest from behind us. There was a single man in black clothing, another Anonymous guard. I shot four bullets at him, and they hit him cleanly so that blood dropped onto the white, shining ground. Just like that, the snow was tainted and we were without a pilot to fly us away.

Captain Lewis helped me lift Major Dalton into the cargo hold, laying him up beside a crate of ammo. "I'll tend to him for now. Have you had any experience flying?" he asked me once I shut the automatic door.

"I did some training in simulators before I was assigned to work in the field four years ago," I replied nervously, bending over to remove the headset from the dying body of our pilot. "That's going to have to be good enough. Try to tend to the pilot as well, OK?" I hurried into the cockpit and slipped into the seat, pulling down the safety belts quickly and activating my newly acquired headset.

The controls in the cockpit of the plane sprang to life, and I flicked some switches that I vaguely remembered to be in a Vector. Thrusters, brake system, activating machine gun and missile targeting systems… Soon enough, the plane was lifting from the ground at a relatively slow speed, but the fact that it even was brought great relief to me. I tested speaking into my headset. I had no idea where to go in order to reach a base once more, or maybe the pilot even had some objective to carry out.

"Overlord, this is the Vector plane in Danderyd, the pilot has been shot out in the extraction of SEAL Team Six Hit Squad, this is Captain Richter from the cockpit available for immediate tasking," I spoke frantically, hovering above the nuclear facility. A red blinking light started to flash on the right of the joystick that controlled the plane's movements. There was an RPG missile flying toward us, and I swerved out of the way to the left. In this process, I spotted a convoy of four cars driving away from the direction that we had come, going southeast.

"Vector 2-6, we are turning on infrared sights for you, there is a convoy leaving the nuclear power plant facility as we speak with HVIs onboard. We need you to fly the plane in pursuit of the convoy, keep it slow as cars can only travel so fast and you aren't a normal pilot. What's the sitrep on your squad's status?" Overlord responded back, and instantly the window of the cockpit became a light green color. The cars that I had seen were suddenly highlighted in red, and knowing that these were my objectives, I steered the plane in that direction and activated the thrusters. The cars were going just a bit slower than me, and I was going 110 miles per hour.

"One casualty in the power plant, which is subject to meltdown in about thirty seconds, and two major bullet wound injuries onboard our plane. How long before we have any reinforcements?" I asked, flying just above the road that the convoy was cutting through. It winded around a forest of trees covered in snow, making visibility for them very difficult unless they were using infrared sights like I was at the moment.

"We'll be able to send in support helicopters in about fifteen minutes time, but for now you're on your own. Keep tailing the convoy until they stop, at which point you are to secure all officers within the group. Good luck, Captain," Overlord explained, essentially bidding me goodbye with that last sentence. I was screwed, pretty much.

More red blinking lights appeared, and another plane flew past me on my right, banked left, and slipped back behind me. Through both runs, bullets sprayed the sides of my plane, and I lifted up into the air to try and get a view of my attackers. In red on my infrared sightlines were three other enemy jets, and none of them were cargo ships; all were designed for fast flying and shooting up areas on close air support runs.

Nevertheless, I locked onto one of them using my targeting system and fired three missiles at it. One of them was deflected by flares that the plane released and flew into the trees below, demolishing a small area of the forest far from the road the convoy was on. The other two missiles smashed into the plane that they had locked onto, as the pilot hadn't fired enough flares for three missiles. The explosion rocked the ship and it spiraled out of control beneath me, creating an even larger explosion amid the snowy forest. Apparently the people in the convoy were really important, so I needed to pick up the pace if I wanted to reach wherever they were going. Or, I could face the alternative of shooting down the other planes. It seemed like the right way to go, but I didn't like my odds.

It was then that there was an explosion far behind me, probably at the nuclear power plant as an explosion in part of the meltdown. This one was in the distance so it wasn't as loud, but for about five seconds the dark sky lit up, even when viewing through my infrared sights. It was quite astonishing, and the planes beneath me slowed down for a second, as did the convoy down in the trees. I took the moment as an advantage and locked onto another plane, firing three more missiles in its direction. This time there were no flares at all as I had caught the pilot by surprise, and it blew up in the sky without even spinning out of control. Wreckage just fell aimlessly to the ground, without a greater purpose than burying itself in the snow.

Another red blinking light, and I pressed a button to release some flares myself. There was an explosion behind the ship, but it hadn't actually hit me. I dived down closer to the ground and saw another missile streaking across the sky above me, actually slanting upwards. I had dodged that attack, so my confidence was building. If I could take this last plane out, then I would be free to capture the convoy in peace.

Of course, things were never quite that easy, and another missile hit my right wing. I was hit. "Mayday, Overlord, this is Vector 2-6, I'm going down…" I shouted, trying to keep control. Surprisingly, I still could steer the ship, although it was descending without me having any control over its altitude. There was also a slight unbalance so it hung a little to the left, making it harder for me to go straight. "Wait, the convoy is slowing down. I think I might have kept on their tail for just long enough, Overlord…"

The trees cleared out to reveal a railroad station, complete with small little buildings and even a train waiting for the convoy, I assumed. It was old fashioned, with a little steam coming out from the funnel in the front car. There were seven cars in all, including a caboose, and the cars pulled to a stop in a parking lot just outside of the building that led to the boarding station.

That was the last I saw, though, as my plane smashed into a tree and crashed in a field just to the right of the parking lot, a soft enough landing where I survived. But the glass cockpit shattered, showering me with glass shards, and a piece of metal hit me over the head. I slumped over the destroyed equipment, completely unconscious of my surroundings.

Back in the present, I touched my hand to my knee. It hurt still from the plane crash, a fracture in my kneecap. The doctors had figured that out simply; in methods that the Resistance would have no idea on how to comprehend the science behind it. But was it science, or was it something even greater; some sort of magic, maybe. Either way, the kneecap hurt even more when I touched my hand to it, a bitter memory of that day.

I forgot that Cobalt was still watching me. "The meltdown, I'm assuming, destroyed the facility while Captain Teague was there, so I'm assuming that he died," I said bitterly, chewing my lip. I hadn't known any of the Hit Squad for that long, but anyone who died because of Anonymous had a reason to be avenged. So whenever Cobalt disregarded the deaths of the people that I knew like it was just a simple part of passing war, something inside of me sparked. A human life was to be treated as something more than a pawn in the war. And as infuriated as I got, I hadn't even told the story of Lexi yet.

Throughout my tale, however, I was sure that Cobalt would end up questioning my loyalty based on decisions that I had made. At some point, there would come a time where I had to tell the roots of my life, and in turn explaining who Lexi was... and why she had stuck in my head like a bad memory that I couldn't drop. Then again, that was exactly what she and her tales were; there were just some beneficiary moments mixed in.

"The plane crashed next to a train station in Danderyd. You assume that the convoy was boarding the train, but then again you were in a pile of wreckage. Then what, Hawkeye?" Cobalt spoke to me through the amplified speakers, but my mind was somewhere else. Images of Lexi morphed into Sydney, and then into the Enderdragon as it prepared to kill us all… If this what it felt like to be drunk, or on some kind of drugs, I didn't like it. Hallucinations were everywhere, all of them fueling the sadness and rage inside of me to the point where I didn't lash at Cobalt, but instead just felt sick to my stomach.

I fell over, my metal chair tipping over in the other direction and clattering against the ground. Instead of the sound of steel hitting cement, though, I heard the sound of a magazine of ammunition being loaded into a gun. Then something that I didn't expect at all: my own voice. I heard it clearly, although I was certain it wasn't actually me speaking, but rather an old memory being replayed within me. "And then you insert the mag into the open space here, you see? It's not that hard."

The sound of another person followed. It was deeper, and slightly hostile. "I know how to load a gun, Jay. Even though I traditionally use other weapons considering that I'm the Guardian of the Nether and you just happen to be some lucky soldier from Earth…"

"You need to learn to take this seriously, Herobrine! We don't have much time!"

"Seriously? SERIOUSLY? You're asking ME to take things seriously, even after all of the mistakes your race has made? You are nobody, Jay Richter. Nobody…"

My body shook without me telling it to, reacting to bolts of electricity surging through it. This wasn't supposed to happen. I knew that I was different after I had spent time in Minecraftia, but this, I didn't know what this was. Everything in my vision was tinted blue, and then a blue aura surrounded just the edges of my eyes, and suddenly all I could see were electrical frequencies, bolts of blue lightning dancing in front of me.

"Hawkeye!" Cobalt yelled, but the electrical nature of the amplifiers made my body shake more. Electricity surged through my veins, like a machine or a computer. A human was not supposed to have this happen to them. A human under this could… a human could die.

I was far away from Cobalt now, though. The lightning was gone, and instead of laying on the ground aimlessly, I was instead lying on a bed. That somehow seemed to have more purpose, or rather, I just knew that it was normally to be in that position rather than being sprawled on my stomach on a concrete floor.

My muscles ached, but there was no pain like the lightning from before. As I looked at my hands, however, I discovered that the colors, instead of being solid, looked like they were being animated in some sort of way, pulsing with electrical light. So too did my clothing, and the blankets on my bed. That electrical reaction that I had had, whatever it was, it had led to this.

Now that I sat up, the room seemed familiar. It was my bunking room underground from my stay with the Enders, and I wasn't alone. The cobblestone walls held all of my main utilities, along with Sydney and Tyler staring down at me from opposite sides of the bed.

"Guys!" I exclaimed sitting up and wrapping my arms around Sydney to my left, pressing our mouths together lightly and then turning to Tyler on my right. He raised a closed fist and I bumped mine to his, and they both sat next to me on the bed. "Is this a link, or what?"

"Yeah, unfortunately this is a link in the First Realm. It's kind of messed up for some reason, something about electrical frequencies," Tyler confirmed, scratching his head as he thought. "Or at least that's what Notch said in a link we had with him just now."

"Neither of us, nor Prae and Alex have any idea what any of this stuff means. Your machinery is so hard to understand, really. Complicated circuitry instead of just piecing redstone together. It doesn't make sense to make it so hard to understand," Sydney commented, pushing some of her dark brown hair out from over her eyes. I had missed the two of them so much in the hours in my interrogation room that cut me off from them and the others.

Tyler was about an inch taller than me at six foot eight, and he was built athletically like me. In fact, we were alike in many of the same ways except for facial features that it almost was like we were half twins, however that might work. Our light skin was basically the same color, and I had already mentioned our height. He had black hair, though, and it was cut short as opposed to my dirty blond color. He had brown eyes as opposed to my green ones, as well, and his nose stuck out a little bit more. I believe that that last feature was just because of my years in a combat helmet, not because of genetics.

Sydney, on the other hand, was shorter than me by about three inches, and her skin was a bit more tanned than Tyler and mine. Her eyes were a stormy gray, like dark clouds in the middle of a hurricane, and her hair spilled out behind her shoulders and over her face as well. We had a joke how in order to see who she was talking to in calm situations, she constantly had to push it out of her eyes or tuck it behind her ears. Her hair, however, seemed to have an undying wish to obstruct her vision. She swept the right side of her face again while I surveyed her, cracking a smile as she was obviously thinking about the joke like me.

I got out of the bed and walked over to the desk next to my crafting table. "Well, since this link isn't exactly as clear as one is supposed to be, I'm going to assume that the electrical frequencies are interfering with this as well," I wondered, writing down some algorithms on a piece of paper with a feather pen. The equations had to do with how the electrical frequencies in the air could interfere with other signals. I hadn't realized that I had known so much about this subject until Notch tested me, but in high school I had been taking advanced physical science classes. This, though, I was pretty sure that this was out of proportion. Once I finished, I gave the paper to Tyler. "Explain to Notch what's on this," I told him, standing from my desk again.

He slipped the paper into his toolbelt, the standard issue ones that were powered by an enchanted type of redstone that Alex had found twenty seven years before during his quest to defeat the Enderdragon. If this was my quest, then what would I discover, and what would I destroy? The ideas haunted me, but I tried not to let them get to my head. "So why are you guys here anyways?" I queried, now standing again.

"Well, Notch wanted us to test out if links would work in the First Realm or not, and it was pretty obvious who we wanted to link with," Sydney explained, standing next to me. "And we figured, since we are testing it out, why not check for an update on you?"

I put my head in my hands. "It's terrible. I know that it is the Resistance that captured me, so there's at least something positive for me to work with. But I'm trapped in one room, and it feels like there is absolutely no fresh air. Right now the interrogator is trying to get me to explain everything, and right now I'm on the day that I got into Minecraftia."

Tyler chewed his lip, thinking in that intense way that he always did. Whenever there was a problem he was trying to solve, he basically zoned out, trying to establish some sort of idea on how to fix it. "Maybe we could somehow bust you out. Do you have any idea where you're being held?" he thought aloud.

I shook my head gravely. "Most likely somewhere in North America, but I don't think it would be in close vicinity to Chicago. Remember, there was the Anonymous outpost just outside of Naperville. No, somewhere farther east most likely."

As Tyler continued to think, Sydney knit her eyebrows. "Well, they can't just be asking you to tell everything that happened without a clear motive. What do they want from you?"

"Information," I mumbled closing my eyes as I remembered the interrogation room that I had just been in. "They want me to tell them where the Enderdragon has set up its base at. And they are certain that I know because they caught me on camera back in Wrigley Field opening the folder first. I know that the memory is somewhere inside my head, but I can't remember what was in it."

"Do you want to know, because we've looked over the folder. We can't assault it without you, though. You're the key piece," Sydney confirmed.

Once more, I shook my head. This time it seemed a little bit more forced. "No, I need to remember it myself or I won't be able to live with myself. As soon as I give them the information, the sooner I have to tell them where you all are hiding out so that they can go pick you up as high value individuals," I said, declining her offer. "Or, if you're really unlucky, and I can see why they would do this, high value targets."

The two of them seemed to understand what I was proposing. "Just remember, Jay, that the longer that you stall the Resistance in their interrogation, the longer that the Enderdragon has to bide its time. And I don't want to fight it at full strength, but that's just me personally," Tyler reminded me, suddenly popping out of his thinking state of mind.

My mouth grew dry as I remembered this, and I nodded slightly. "Yeah, I'll remember that. I hope you guys are safe, though," I said, thinking. "You guys are camping out at Safehouse Bravo, right?"

Tyler nodded. "Yeah, and we'll be there until you need us. Or until you and your militarized friends come and take us by force." He smiled at that, and I forced a small grin. It wasn't funny to me because that was the harsh reality of it all.

I managed to grin, but my throat still felt unnaturally dry as I thought about the Enderdragon and how it was going to doom us. "When I figure out a way out of the Resistance camp, wherever it is, I'll come and find you guys. We'll find a way to complete the Prophecy of the First Realm, I swear to you that we will." With that, I hugged both of them, shuddering to think that I would have to live in this interrogation room until I found a way for them to rescue me or for me to reach them.

Sydney pulled up the sleeve of her purple hoodie, revealing the bracelet that I had made for her. It was made of the finest gems from Minecraftia: some pieces of glowstone, diamonds, gold, redstone, iron, and emerald. Finally, there was a bullet case I had added on Earth.

She set it down on the desk table, and I reached into my pocket. Just like that, my trusted diamond tomahawk was there, its metal sleek and shiny and the center carved out. It was deadly, with a small point sticking out of the back end as well for maximum effectiveness. The leather grip in my hand felt familiar, like it had been something missing during the time that I was in the Resistance interrogation room. "I'll see you guys later," I said, bidding them goodbye, and I brought down the weapon on the bracelet.

The pieces smashed apart, but there were no tears about that being destroyed. After all, it wasn't the real bracelet anyways, but just an illusion as part of the link. It held the link together, something that the host of the link had to have that they were emotionally attached to, and feed the source of it into the link. As it was destroyed, the room that I had lived in for a few days and that had grown on me faded away, as did Sydney and Tyler. I waved at them, but soon enough they were just white outlines, no color at all, and then they were gone.

So too was I. The thought depressed me.


	3. Train Kept A Rollin'

_He who declares himself ready to pull the chestnuts out of the fire for these powers must realize he burns his fingers…_

_~Adolf Hitler on April 28__th__, 1939_

"Hawkeye!" Yeah, that's my name. Well, it's not really my name, but rather my codename among the Navy. I guess I could go by it.

"Hawkeye!" This time I got up from the floor, in one fluid motion so that I was standing up and staring threateningly at the source of the noise. I shook my head to clear it from my heavy grogginess, refocusing and sitting back down in the metal chair.

I breathed slowly, trying to regain my senses. It would be harder to maintain links on Earth, it seemed, and did I even want to? I didn't want to tell Sydney and Tyler, but I was pretty sure that connecting to the link was what had caused me to begin hallucinating and going under a kind of shock therapy. The risk was worth the reward in my opinion, and the reward was just too close to me to give up.

Now that I was back to reality, I inched my chair into a more comfortable position against the table. I could practically feel the eyes of whoever Cobalt was staring at me, trying to decipher what all of this meant. Was I some insane person, they were probably thinking. Was I just another piece of their giant puzzle to try and find the truth, nothing more than a pawn?

Now, especially after being able to Tyler and Sydney briefly in the link just now, the room that I was locked in felt really lonely. There were only six other people that were on my side through all of this, and none of them were here with me. In fact, they might be hundreds of miles away, depending on where this Resistance base was. I could be just outside of the Safehouse or halfway across the country for all I knew.

My head began pounding as I thought about everything; literally, everything. What my fate was written out to become, what it was actually becoming in reality, and the fate of all the others that had accompanied me into the First Realm to try and help me achieve the prophecy about me. Supposedly about me. The way things were going, I doubted that fact more and more every day. Maybe it was meant for someone else, because it didn't look like it was me.

I shook off my feelings of sadness and regret, though. I still had quite a job to do, and at the moment, I was nowhere close to finding a way out of this airtight room. "I'm sorry," I stammered, recognizing Cobalt finally. He was probably taking notes on my weird reaction, knowing that me slumping and falling unconscious was no fluke. "I guess the injury from my kneecap hit a climax and knocked me out." There was no way that the Resistance interrogators would believe that, but it was ample enough that they moved on.

"Fine then," Cobalt stated, pausing to think about his next objective. "Your plane crashed just outside of the train tracks. Then what?"

I closed my eyes, trying to calm my breathing and focus. "The world spun around me, and I heard a pop in my knee," I continued, caressing my kneecap absent-mindedly. It still throbbed a little bit, but for the most part it had been healed. "And I blacked out."

_Train Kept A Rollin'_

_Captain Jay 'Hawkeye' Richter_

_November 17__th__, 2246_

_00:22_

_Danderyd, Sweden_

_Earth_

I was breathing heavily, trying to maintain my cool somehow as the world spun around me. When I woke up, it had been a few minutes since the plane had crashed, and I was pretty much stuck. In just over an hour and fifteen minutes, I had gone from being safe at a Resistance base to being injured in the heart of Anonymous territory in the close proximity. The feeling made my stomach queasy, as if I were an animal being hunted by poachers.

I struggled to pull my legs out from under the sparking control panel, but it was painful. After all, my left kneecap kept bumping into pieces of shrapnel or just broken material and gave a sharp jolt of pain every single time that this happened. The sweatpants that I had been wearing under my juggernaut armor didn't do much to protect it, either. Eventually I lifted myself out of the destroyed cockpit and turned around to take survey of the rest of the plane.

It was demolished behind me, flaming in some places and outright obliterated from the crash in others. There was no way that anyone could have survived from the cargo hold without proper safety buckling like I had in the front. If the plane had landed evenly, then I might have died as well. However, luckily for me, while it had been spinning out of control it had reached an angle so that the back side of the plane hit the ground first, making my impact less traumatic. I thanked God, and then struggled to actually get out of the cockpit.

The first step was testing my kneecap to see if I could any weight on it; however minimal that amount may have been. I stood up at that point and positioned my left leg so that it was supporting me as I climbed out of the wreckage. My injury stung a little bit, but it was minor enough where I was able to climb out and jump to the ground.

I felt my back pocket and wrapped my fingers around a rubber grip. My Five Seven was still with me, although I would have preferred an automatic weapon. I brought the gun out in front of me, preparing for any kind of threat that would try to kill me. Since the train was just next to the parking lot that I was standing in, I developed a plan. I would make my way around the train station, make sure that all of the HVIs were on board, and then climb over the metal railing on the caboose to board the train. Then I would be able to infiltrate each car while it moved along the tracks, wherever the led.

As I hurried across the snow covered parking lot, not bothering to try and cover my tracks, the train blew its horn twice. The locomotive would be moving in just under a minute. If the targets that Overlord had set for me weren't on now, then they might be staying. And I didn't see any reason for that considering the shape of the nuclear power plant. So without protesting to myself any more, I made my way around the station to the caboose, which was empty. I set my gun back in my pocket and lifted myself up by my forearms, ultimately thumping down on the metal platform in open air. The station was empty except for two guards, but neither of them took notice of me as I slipped inside the door of the train.

My first thought was to raise my pistol and shoot, just to make sure that there would be no initial reaction from anyone in this car. However, like a traditional train, the back car was mainly used for storage. And where newspapers and refrigerator cars may have rested in the 1800s were crates of ammo and guns. It was a treasure trove of goodies, and they would all aid me in my coming fight. But first, I had to develop a plan.

That was when I remembered the headset on my ear. "Overlord, this is Hawkeye once more. All other men with me are most likely K.I.A. in the wreckage of the Vector crash. Make the helicopter that has been sent to pick me up go for them instead, they need medical treatment in case they are still alive," I began, looking over the creates and some of the exposed guns. There was a silenced Skorpion, a high damage but low range SMG. It was a Russian weapon, and I picked it up to replace my pistol. There was a magazine loaded into it at the moment, and seven extra ones in a stack right next to where it had been lying.

"That's confirmed, Hawkeye, rerouting support helicopters to crash site. Where are you at the moment, our UAVs indicate the train is leaving the station at this very moment," Overlord voiced in, and I felt strangely comforted to hear another Resistance member's voice.

"I'm on the caboose of the train and am currently rearming using Anonymous military supplies. I would like support helicopters to follow this train so that I can get a proper exfil from wherever this train stops," I told Overlord.

"We'll send three Black Hawks to trace your location, but they'll be approximately fifteen minutes behind you. Good luck, Hawkeye," Overlord responded. Just like that, my contact was out. I put my head in my hands and tried to develop a plan, but my head was centered around the fact of what a disaster the day had been. First of all, my entire squad was most likely dead because of all that had happened. I hadn't known them for long, but like I said before, I don't like any Resistance members in general dying.

_I agree. You've made that fact pretty clear._

Correct. But now, standing on the train, I realized that this train was heading even farther southeast, directly toward Stockholm. It would cross over a part of the Baltic sea that made this area a series of small peninsulas and then cross into downtown. The trip was only seven miles from the downtown of Danderyd, and I was a little closer to Stockholm. So I only had fifteen minutes to get this train locked down.

The thought was mystifying. My father had been famous among the Resistance because of his notoriety for an incident in 2219 where he deserted his group along with another officer in search of Notch. I now understood the whole story, but the legends among the armed forces were very much exaggerated. When I had been growing up, though, it almost made me feel like a celebrity. I strutted around like I was really someone special, and now, ten years later, it turned out that I was. But not in the way that I had expected.

But Stockholm was where Notch and my father had met and transferred the folder all those years ago. It had been magically sealed until the time had come for me, who had received it from his will once he died, was able to open it to perform the task that Notch wanted me to do.

_And that was to pick your way through the world along with your virtual friends and infiltrate Chicago to find the more important folder, the one that had been kept secret from absolutely everyone except for Notch and his Earth followers._

Just because the people that lived near the spot of the grave knew about it didn't mean that they wanted to go and dig it up to find what was so important. It was someone else's destiny, they must've thought, although I really wished it hadn't been mine.

_If it wasn't, then you wouldn't be here right now._

Yeah, but then where would I be? I can't imagine a world without my adventures over the past month now, a world without Sydney and Tyler, a world without the Enderdragon. But there is the impulse in my head that makes me wish that I could.

Back in Sweden, I was ready to continue. I had formed a barebones plan, but it would flesh out as I continued applying it to my situation. Basically, I would infiltrate every car shoot up all the men with guns, while keeping the high ranked officers hostage. Once I was able to knock them out unconscious for safekeeping, then I would be able to move on to the next car.

Barebones was definitely the right word for the situation, the entire plan able to be stretched and add new details to it. I had very high doubts that this would work, but at least using a silencer would prevent guards from other cars to be notified of my infiltration on the train. Besides, they would know about it soon enough that it didn't even matter.

I stepped to the metal door that was the end of the train and pushed down on the handle. It was a little stiff, taking a bit more effort than I had expected to push it down. Once that was done I held it and pushed it open. Cold air rushed into the train car as the world sped by, snowy plains and forests as we neared the water that separated the two peninsulas. I really didn't have much time, so I gripped the handle of the door to the next car and wrenched it open.

The train car was relatively small, with some seating and two guards at the door on the other side. I had them beat though, firing down the sights of my suppressed Skorpion across the train car so that both guards dropped dead on the ground quickly. The four people sitting in train cars had halted their discussion, raising their hands in surrender. I stared them all down, closing the door that opened the room to freezing cold temperatures.

One of the people sitting there, however, had a sort of smug look on his face. I looked over at him, knowing that he must have alerted somebody else somehow. "We aren't important," the man said, staring up at me threateningly. "We anticipated your attack, and hid the high value individuals in the front car. You'll never reach them in time, after all, we still have a trick up our sleeve."

That was when I hurried to the next door to the next train car, not caring that the man might just be trying to throw me off. There was something inside me that said he was right. The freezing cold air blasted me in the face once again, but there was something notably wrong. There was a man on the other side of the metal bars that connected the two cars unlatching them. Once he was done he ducked into the next train car, and the one that I was standing on began to slow down. He had disconnected me from his train.

The space between the trains was about two feet now, and I braced myself and jumped. My feet hit the train car's metal platform hard, momentarily stunning me. But there was no time to waste, and I hurried through the next car. This one was unguarded, with another group of people sitting at a table looking at me, bewildered. They were just useless decoys, and after all, Anonymous couldn't care about them at all if this was the fate they were reaching at the hands of Anonymous. So instead I hurried to the end of the next train car.

The space was already three feet here, and I jumped through toward the next car. This time I barely made it, and I turned back briefly to watch the three train cars going away. It didn't matter, I figured, and sprinted through the next one just as the man was bending down to unlatch the car I was on now. My reflexes were quicker, though, and I shot him dead on the spot with my submachine gun. His hands hadn't been quick enough to unlatch this one, so it remained intact as he faltered over onto the tracks.

I was safe for now, and I watched as we crossed back over to the land from going over that large water basin. We were very near Stockholm now, but that was when things went wrong. The body of the man I had shot toppled onto the tracks and the train wheels ran over it, bumping it up into midair and spinning it out of control. As we neared the next station, the car I was standing on twisted sideways, as did the one in front of me. The train was going to crash.

Debris sailed over my head from one of the cars in front of me and I was thrown back into the train car. While one of the people who had been sitting at the table flew backward through the back door and out onto the tracks behind us, I grabbed onto a metal bar at the top of the cabin, snow whipping into my face as the car went sideways.

A crate of supplies sailed toward me and hit my side, knocking me backwards. My grip on the metal bar faltered, but I maintained hold to make sure that I didn't fly backward. As more cold wind blasted my face uncomfortably, the train smashed into a building. I was thrown aside this time, completely losing my grip on the metal bar on the ceiling. Flipping through the air, I smashed into the side of the train car and then flew to the other side, crashing through a glass window.

Momentarily I felt suspended, weightless, as if I was floating through space aimlessly. That feeling abruptly stopped as I hit the snowy turf, rolling over in the white frozen ground.

It was freezing cold, and shivers went up and down my back in an instant. The train had stopped moving about a football field away from me, flames sparking all over it in a bright array of light. I slowly got back to my feet, and realized that I had dropped my Skorpion in the crash. Once again, I took out my Five Seven as a safety precaution, trying to get any kind of protection against the Anonymous forces that were sure to swarm this sight in the coming minutes thanks to the train crash. The thought scared me a little bit, and I started struggling through the snow faster. If someone was going to come to reach the crash site, I hoped they wouldn't find me.

Finally I reached the train car that I had flown out of. The metal frame was on its side, small pieces of cargo that had flown out of it like crates of supplies or just chairs and tables were either charred black or still in bright flames. The heat warmed me for a couple moments while the freezing cold weather threatened to stop my body from moving all together, my exposed hands turning bright red because of the cold. Blood rushing to one place in your body was not good in combat, as it stimulated your blood flow and made it easier to lose blood quickly if shot.

I continued walking toward the front of the train car in order to make some attempt at capturing the high value individuals that I had been assigned into corralling. Remembering the headset that I had used in the plane and train cars to communicate with Overlord, I felt the top of my head to try and feel the metal band that wrapped around my head. There was nothing there except for my hair. Although I was glad that my hair hadn't been cut or singed off in the train crash by fire, it was a bit of a disappointment to find nothing except for it.

I reached the front of the train. It was a little bit different from the other train cars, the front of it sloped down with a little window so that the driver could see inside. Of course, the glass had shattered and provided me a view inside to see if the high value individuals had survived the crash. The driver was nowhere to be seen, but there were five bodies in the back, all bloody and lifeless. It was a sad sight to see, but then again, they were the enemy. But personally, I wouldn't wish someone to die that pitifully, anybody. Even an Anonymous member. Though some people might disagree, that was the truth that I thought to be true.

Now that I had no forms of communication with the Resistance and there was no reason for a helicopter to come down here, I was stranded. They might have been able to see me using UAV scans from satellites, but I still doubted that they believed I would have survived. That was when the luck of the situation touched me in an odd sort of way; I had survived two deadly vehicle crashes within half an hour.

Unfortunately, knowing that didn't make the current situation any easier for me. I would surely freeze to death if I was left out here for much longer. There was nothing that I could do, and since it would be stupidity to waste ammo on using my gun as a kind of flare using the flashes of light from every shot in the dark, I didn't have any idea how I could contact anyone.

What I hadn't remembered was that this was Stockholm in front of me. This was literally my destiny to be here. I had remembered what my father had told me years ago at that moment, as if a crazy revelation had just opened in front of me. There had been one inside of me, I suppose, and the impact was greater than I could have imagined.

The memory I remembered was from thirteen years prior, when I was just nine years old. It was probably the saddest moment in my life, because it didn't inspire any sort of revenge like what had happened to Lexi. It was simply saddening.

I was on a swing set, rocking back and forth over the ground in the seat that was suspended over the air using ropes. Shadows were beginning to fall as the sun set in the distance, most particularly the tree directly behind me that cooled the air I was sitting in. It was a beautiful April in a Resistance civilization camp in Florida, a former state in the United States. It was beautiful there, with the lush Bermuda grass and the beautiful palm trees lining every road on each side. There were even a couple theme parks that the Resistance had renovated for the enjoyment of people working in that civilization camp.

My dad came out of the screen door from the back of our house. He had ended his service in the military when I was born, but the five years prior to that he hadn't worked in the field much anyways. He had more just made strategic adjustments from military bases than actually gone out on missions like I was right now. Then he had retired altogether, like I already said, because my mother died in childbirth. He didn't like talking about her much.

When he came outside to me, his face was surprisingly grim. I couldn't think of why he was in a bad mood, but then again, there was no way that I could have known prior to that point. So instead I hopped off the swing and came over to him quickly, like your typical nine year old. "Hey Dad!" I called out to him, grinding to halt in front of him so that my head reached somewhere between his stomach and chest. He smiled down at me and walked over to the swing where I had been.

"Jay," he muttered, now obviously not in a good mood. "I have to go back to the Army."

The news took a couple seconds for me to register. I screwed my eyebrows together, trying to think what that meant. "And I can go with you, right?" I asked innocently.

My father's grim smile faded into a look of deep regret. "I'm sorry, Jay, but no. You have to stay here. It's too dangerous."

"But Dad, I want to come with you. I can fight alongside you in the army and stuff," I protested, staring pleadingly into his eyes. But his mind was already made up.

"They need me again in Europe. Something only I can solve, something that no one else knows how to do. But it is going to be really dangerous, so you're going to have to stay. I'm going to get a house-sitter for you, and she'll make sure you eat and go to school when you're supposed to and go to bed at night," my father explained, tears in his eyes.

"But before I go," he said, interrupting his own run on sentence, "There's something I need to give you." With that he took a manila folder out of the backpack that he wore everywhere and handed it to me. It was sealed closed on the edges with some sort of glue. "This folder, it is magically sealed. It won't open until the time is right, and when it does come to that time, the folder will guide you and explain what you need to do, OK?"

The folder held in my hands, and a strange white aura surrounded it. "Magic?" I breathed, thinking that it must have been a trick or something.

My father knelt down in front of me, placing his hands on my shoulders. "Jay, you need to keep it concealed. It isn't meant for normal people to see. You and me, we're special. We know things that normal people in this world don't, and hopefully never will."

The tears were coming to my eyes. It was hard for me to comprehend exactly what he meant by all of this, but I knew one thing; my father was leaving to go back to Europe, and it didn't sound like he would be coming back. He kissed me goodbye on the forehead and walked through the house and gathered some bags that he was going to bring with him. There was a house-sitter who was waiting outside our house named Ms. Baker, and I basically adopted her as my mom. She was really nice, in her late twenties and really supportive of me.

Two weeks after my father left we got a letter that he had been K.I.A. I didn't know how until recently, when I went to Minecraftia myself. But the reason the memory stirred in my head was because of the folder, which was in my backpack. It made sense that this was my destiny, right? I was isolated with no help in Stockholm, where my father's journeys had begun.

It almost seemed like destiny that I was here, finally. As soon as we had gotten the letter that my father had lost his life, I suspected that it was here in Stockholm. After all, the mission that he had gone on couldn't have been performed by anyone except for him, and so it would make perfect sense if it had something to do with his legend.

With those thoughts in mind, I slung my backpack off of my shoulder where it landed in the cold snow with a thud. I bent over and unzipped it, taking out the manila folder. I had always carried it around with me in the backpack as it was the one lone memory of my father. Today, though, as I lifted it out in the cold winter's night, it glowed brighter than usual. That had to be a sure sign that something was going on here. Whatever time that my father had been indicating, I was starting to feel certain that it was now.

I closed my backpack and lifted it back onto my shoulders, holding the folder in front of me. I tugged on the edges. As usual, whenever I tried to open the folder it wouldn't budge. This time it was no different, but I hadn't expected it to do that anyways. What it did do freaked me out a little bit, because I certainly hadn't been expecting it.

As I stared at it next to the train wreck, a red handwriting began appearing on the outside of the folder. I watched in wonder as it formed before my eyes, the script seemingly communicating to me. _Jay Richter_, it inscribed in the fancy red font, and I hurriedly read it to make sure that I got everything. _The time has come for your discovery._

With that, the writing faded away quickly, and instead the outside of the folder turned into a video service. There was a red logo against a white backdrop, and underneath it read Mojang. The company that had made that Mojang disaster just before the war started, the event that seemingly unleashed the curse on humanity so that no one could invent anything new. Did my father have something to do with their work?

The logo faded, replaced by a man's face. He had a short brown goatee and a matching brown bowler hat that hid his hair, or at least if he even had any. "Jay Richter," he spoke in a low voice, "You are the last hope for humanity."

The words confused me. "Who are you?" I asked it, but the message was prerecorded, as there was no indication by the man that I had even spoken.

"As the Resistance and Anonymous have squabbled for two centuries about territories in an apocalyptic, war torn world, our society has prospered as an experiment for eternal life. Though it may have set a curse upon you, it was a blessing to me and my people," the man spoke, and I had an inference on who this might be all of a sudden.

"The threat of the Enderdragon threatened to destroy us before, or at least, at the time that I am recording this message, it is right now. I am certain that it will be stopped this time around, but it will return with no one standing in its way except for you," he continued, none of the words making any sense to me. What was an Enderdragon, who was this man, and why was I all of a sudden the last hope of humanity?

"You have been abandoned by your superiors in the frozen tundra of Sweden, freezing to death," the man stated, and shivers went down my back. The fires from the train crash would die down soon, and with a black T-shirt on, I wouldn't be able to resist frostbite for that long. "And the Enderdragon rises again now, when this message is playing for you, in hopes that you will follow it and heed its warning."

None of this made any sense, but I listened intently nevertheless. "Since the portal has been temporarily deactivated, I am going to lock you into Minecraftia at the most appropriate spawn for your survival as we speak. The folder that you have been passed down by your father will open in time, as its purpose will soon be fulfilled." I stared at the folder, realizing that Minecraftia was that game that the Mojang disaster had been centered around, and the myths of my father meeting Notch, who had created the game so that he could make it into his own real life universe, which he had succeeded in… The thoughts rushed over me in an instant. That had been Markus Persson, and whatever the folder was about to do, it was going to suck me into Minecraftia just like the others who had been trapped there for so long.

I dropped the folder on the cold snow ground and began backing away from it nervously. Surely the Navy would send help for me, or else there would be no reason to wait out here. But the more I thought about it, the less likely it seemed. The convoy had crashed, the high value individuals were all dead, and all of the evacuation helicopters were tending the other casualties at the first train station.

The folder sparked, a blue flash of lightning running over it. All of a sudden it erupted in a flash of green light, an unimaginable force sucking me toward it, where snowflakes shot into the small wormhole that was being projected by it in midair. Just before I was sucked in I grabbed the folder and took it with me, vanishing from the Earth indefinitely.

With that, I made my discovery. I found another dimension.


	4. Storm Surge

**Hello once more, faithful readers!**

**Hope you guys are checking out Ignition Point. Don't really have much to say right now, so, let the story commence!**

_The breakers war on an unseen shore. In the teeth of a hurricane, oh, we struggle in vain!_

_~The Wreckers by Rush_

Beads of sweat appeared on my forehead and neck as the memories coursed through my mind as I remembered everything that had predated the mess that I was currently in. I leaned back in my metal chair, collecting myself and breathing slowly as goosebumps slowly spread across my arms. I could almost feel the freezing cold from that day right here in the solitary of the interrogation cell I was stuck in.

"And just like that the cold was gone. It was replaced by a weightless feeling, as if I were floating in space," I continued to Cobalt, remembering the scenes as the unfolded before my eyes like a video that I was watching of my own triumphs and tributes. "I didn't think that anything remotely close to that was possible before. Other worlds that corresponded to ours were just myths, but Notch had created his very own that utilized his own ideas."

"Hawkeye, it isn't written down for obvious reasons, but leaving the dimension that you are working for the Navy SEALs in is a form of desertion," Cobalt scolded, and I rolled my eyes.

"I didn't have the opportunity to actually say no. The wormhole literally sucked me in, it was a portal that made everything in its general area just fly in," I retorted, so stressed that my words were coming out all jumbled up. Literally, my grammar seemed to have abandoned me in the past few minutes, but that was the least of my problems. Right now, I was more concerned about the next part of my story and how I could get Cobalt to believe it.

There was some more shuffling of papers, and the metallic voice of Cobalt was resurrected momentarily to say a few words. "Go on."

_Storm Surge_

_Captain Jay 'Hawkeye' Richter_

_November 17__th__, 2246_

_02:35_

_Location Unknown_

_The Overworld_

Throughout the wormhole, colors seemed to bounce around me, lacking a solid object to actually form on. Blues and greens, reds and yellows, purples and oranges all raced past me as I flew forward with no destination in sight. In fact, my destination hadn't been seen by any human in over two hundred years.

The colors finally began melting down, starting to take shapes and then vanishing from my view until I was floating in a black oblivion. It was dark there, and nothing resided there except for me for a few moments and endless small gray crystals. That scene faded away as well, and instead of seeing anything my vision went black, as if I had just closed my eyes.

Familiar sounds of rushing water awakened me after a few more seconds. My eyes opened slowly, the eyelids heavy from being drowsy, and basically my entire body aching and tired. There was one major difference, though. I wasn't cold anymore.

I pushed my hands against the ground to lift myself up, and felt that I was laying on super compact sand. Standing up now, I took a look around at my surroundings. It was completely breathtaking for someone who had lived in a world of utter destruction for his entire life. The sand at my feet refused to shift at all, and the water that crept up to the side of the beach had no tide. Instead, the crystal clear blue water merely hung at the edge of the land.

To see more of the wonders, I turned around to see the rest of the land mass that I was standing on. The beach went on for a few meters and reached grass which sloped upward gently into a forest. Now that the objects were actually suspended into the air, I noticed that each little piece of the environment was its own block. Literally, they were all geometrically perfect objects that resembled parts of nature. On the tree, for example, tons of leaf blocks surrounded a dark wooden trunk that contained five wood blocks.

Obviously, this was not normal for a world to be so perfect like this, and it made me wonder why anyone could have bothered to take care of Earth as it was so… disheveled. Everything seemed more organized here, whereas anything on Earth could simply be made into a mess of objects or piles of dirt in nature and forgotten. Instead of piles of dirt that made imperfect terrain, however, there were blocks of dirt, the part that faced the sky covered with even green grass. This world literally was perfect in every way.

No sand had clung to my back from lying down, and I walked over to the forest. I was still wearing my black shirt and pants, my combat boots coming up just past my ankle. My combat pack on my back felt strangely empty, and I opened it to see what was actually inside of it. To my surprise, it looked very different than it had before. There were small white boxes, and a few of them contained the things that I had had before being sucked into the wormhole. Most important was the folder, along with my Five Seven, some jerky rations in case I had been abandoned, (which I had been) and a medical pack. That was about it. Along with those white boxes, which came up to thirty six in four rows, there was a small box grid that had four more of the boxes arranged in a square.

All of this was most mysterious, as I was almost certain that my backpack hadn't been designed to keep my inventory that small and compact inside those makeshift slots. Confused at where I was and about all of the things that I had just found out about that concerned my father and his legacy made me angry, and I punched one of the trees out of anger. My aggressiveness only spawned more questions without answers. The block of the tree that I had hit cracked a little bit. I stared at it, mystified that I had put that much effort into punching the tree. Either that or the tree was really weak.

Wanting to test which of the answers was correct, I punched the tree trunk again, a little bit more lightly this time. The cracks spread even more throughout the block of the tree trunk, and I hit it slightly. Again, the wooden trunk splintered and weakened under my force. It took merely two more punches until the wood splintered and cracked to the point where the block simply vanished into thin air, replaced by a replica that hung suspended over the top of the next block of the tree, perfectly undamaged. It didn't make any sense at all. When destroyed, things didn't simply reanimate themselves into smaller versions of what had previously existed. No, they were simply destroyed. Then why was what I was seeing in front of me happening?

The small icon of the tree trunk block slowly crept closer to me, and suddenly zoomed into my backpack. It had happened so fast that I didn't realize where exactly it had gone until I checked inside of my backpack. There, in the white box next to my three items, was a small block of wood identical to the one that had just been floating in air for me. Glancing at the tree and then back inside my backpack in wonder, I realized that this was some sort of inventory for the blocks that made up the world around me, and that I could make different things with them in order to improve my survival abilities and chances.

Then it hit me. I was actually in Minecraft.

There was no one else here, for all that I knew, but the things that I had learned from the legends over time and the message that had played for me before I had gotten sucked into this world made me think subconsciously that there was more to the story than a barren world with no other people inside of it.

The shock was building up inside of my head, and I fell back over onto the lush, green grass, trying to find answers for what to do in this situation. Unfortunately, nothing quite like this had ever happened to any other human being that I knew of, so I was pretty much screwed unless I got some form of contact. Panic began building up inside me, and a sick feeling encompassed my stomach as I frantically looked around me for any sign of civilization. There was none, only the wild world in which I would have to survive in.

It was then that I snapped back into focus. "You're a soldier, Jay," I scolded myself, standing back up on shaky legs for a second chance at my initial reaction. "Find some way to survive until some form of help arrives." The problem was, the chances of that were pretty slim considering where exactly I was and what I was requesting.

No help was coming, and I would have had to adapt to this situation in the ruins of Stockholm anyways had I not been sucked up by the magic folder that was now stowed away in my backpack. Since there was no help, I would have to survive by myself, which couldn't be just too hard in a world abundant with natural resources that were fresh and not being produced into weaponry and steel that would come to make other weaponry.

Step one for survival: take inventory of your immediate surroundings. Well, I had pretty much done that already, knowing for certain that I was on a beach that bordered a seemingly endless ocean or sea or whatever and a large forest that was stock full of oak trees. There wasn't much more to it than that except for the fact that there were no enemies in my sights, which was nice to happen to me for once because of my involvement in the war.

Step two: construct a basic armory of weapons and supplies that will allow you to survive for another day. I already had the food and medical supplies to last me a while in case I got either hungry or mortally wounded. Hopefully just the former. And I didn't need new clothes, considering that it had just gone up at least seventy degrees from the freezing winter temperature of Sweden. If I had still been there, that would have been a problem for me to solve, so in a way I was better off being sucked into another world… no, that wasn't true. Besides, I didn't see a cobbler's store in my so-called immediate surroundings.

Step three: find shelter, or if necessary, build your own out of what you can find. Like I said, there wasn't a cobbler anywhere nearby, and coincidentally no buildings at all. In hope of some plane or whatever, I looked up to the sky and was met by a gray wall of storm clouds. It wasn't raining yet, but it was pretty obvious that it would be pretty soon. It was already night, and the darkness made me afraid, for I had no idea what was here in the dark. Knowing these things, it made finding shelter even more important than ever.

Or, like the step in the abandoned military personnel handbook said, (that's not really a real thing, just to let you know) you could make your own.

_I know that there's no such thing as a military handbook for being missing in action. You know what, forget it. Keep going through the story if that's what you call it._

From the many legends about how the curse that disabled humanity from inventing new ideas or creations, there was a lot that talked about the basics of Minecraft. Most importantly the fact that the whole essence of the game was explained through the two words that made the title of the game. Mine the resources that you needed from the surroundings, and then craft them into more objects that would enable you to survive in nicer buildings and fend off monsters that appeared during the night, things called mobs.

Again, a shocking realization hit me that scared the crap out of every nerve in my body: it was night as I spoke. The click and clatter of bones jumped me to my senses, and I turned around to see what looked like a badly animated skeleton holding a bow that had an arrow notched in it that was aimed directly at me. The arrow didn't look that deadly, the tip of it just a small piece of flint, but I was sure that it wouldn't feel good to have that locked on my body. Behind the skeleton was what appeared to be a zombie of sorts, wearing ripped blue pants and a badly torn teal shirt. It had green skin many bloody wounds in its exposed flesh, and black eyes that seemed to stare straight into my soul.

Both of the undead creatures were advancing toward me, the zombie with its arms outstretched and the skeleton moving slightly to the left to try and get a clearer shot. I quickly got out my Five Seven from my backpack as they approached and checked my ammunition. There were twelve rounds in the gun, a full magazine, plus another five additional magazines. I would probably be able to craft a weapon at some point, but for now I would use as little as I could out of the gun. Aiming down the sights, I shot two bullets into the zombie's head.

The bullets, instead of sinking into the exposed flesh and damaging it, simply passed through the hostile creature and flew out to sea until the lost trajectory speed and dipped down into the water without making a splash. When they had passed through the zombie, they had seemed to disrupt some sort of electrical current. That could have meant many things, but most importantly what I knew already: my gun was useless.

I stumbled backward quickly, trying to avoid confrontation with the hostilities, and felt a bite on my leg through my pants. Glancing down, I saw a spider the size of my body mass chomping down on me with razor sharp teeth and beady red eyes that stared at my cuts, wanting flesh and blood to feast on. Scared, I useless beat it with my hand, and it jumped backward in surprise, hurt, or maybe a little bit of both.

Sprinting past the spider and into the forest, a small rain began falling through the trees, making the ground under my feet slightly muddy and the top of my hair damp so that it clung to my skull. There were many more of the creatures I had seen lurking the forest, and also a species that looked like a walking lizard with green fur and specks of gray skin that walked on four stubbly, short legs. It had a face that was basically two large black holes for eyes and a black hole of a mouth that was twisted down in a disgusted frown.

The sounds of the night rebounded all around me, the snarls and hisses, the clicks and clacks, the footsteps of monsters that all sought to kill me. While I ran, I put my Five Seven back in my backpack and replaced its spot in my hand with a flashlight, which thankfully did work in this world. I flicked it on and traversed through the dark forest with it until I reached a small hole in the ground that was about five blocks long and wide. The monsters were far behind me, and I didn't see any more in this area of the forest, so I could try and find some sort of shelter. A hole in the ground that seemed to stretch down on an angle to become a cave seemed like a perfect place to start, I figured.

I stepped down onto the rocks, which were strangely even when made out of the specific blocks. My flashlight led the way, with me just following it aimlessly in hope that I would get away from the pack of monsters that had chased me through the forest. The cavern was as dank as it was dark, leaving a musty smell in my lungs even though there wasn't any wood in the cave. There was the sound of trickling water in the distance, and I looked back up briefly at the entrance to the cave. The light of the moon that shone through the clouds and the trees was barely apparent, but it did give light for the mobs. It wasn't enough for me, though.

The gray stone walls deepened the eerie feeling of the dark cavern, and I began to expect some other kind of monster to just jump out from around an unseen corner and attack me. My sense of insecurity had only grown when I learned that bullets didn't affect the monsters, so I was essentially without any kind of weapon for defense. I decided to follow the sound of trickling water in hopes that I would find some sort of water basin.

On the walls there were now blocks that had black rock ores in them, coal most likely. Unfortunately, I had no sort of pick to pry it out with, and I also highly doubted the possibility that it was as easy to mine up as the wood from the surface. Just to try it out, I punched a block of the natural stone wall. The smallest dent was made in the side that you could barely even notice the change at all. Mining up the entire block would most likely take ages to do.

At last, the dark corridor opened up into a larger room. Shining my flashlight around as a sort of inspection, I found that the water that had been running at my feet emptied into a large pool in the center of this stone room, which also happened to be an apparent dead end. Along with the water flow that came from my direction, a small gap in the ceiling leaked a heavy stream of the blue liquid into the pool that steadily flowed down.

I walked up to the edge of the water pool and looked down into it. Without my flashlight, I could see that it was about four blocks deep and had its own small hole within it that led down to another level of the cave, which explained why it wasn't overflowing with the steady stream of water sloshing into it. Bored, I shone the flashlight into the water, which created a crystal clear reflection of everything, including me.

My hair was straggled across my forehead, darting around in a million different directions that made me look very sloppy. I didn't care about what my hair looked like that much, but it was kind of uncomfortable for it to be like this. There were also traces of burns and cuts from the battle on Earth which stood out from my skin, as did marks of dirt from running through the mud. Seeing that reminded me that the mobs could be coming after me at any given moment, so I had to remain vigilant if I wanted to survive.

The room seemed like a good place to camp out for the night, however, and I was getting pretty tired. Quickly making sure that none of the monsters were coming through the tunnel that I had entered this cavern from, I laid my backpack down on the ground next to the small basin of water and slumped down onto the ground, resting my head on the backpack. It was surprisingly comfortable because of how the grid inside of it eliminated the possibility of objects inside of it bulging out and creating an uneven surface. In fact, it was just as good as a normal pillow.

A cold rush of air blew through the tunnel and chilled my skin for a second, and I wished that I had a blanket with me. At least I had found a relatively safe place to rest until morning, especially since the surface was being hammered with rain. This was reconfirmed by a loud blast of thunder from the entrance to the tunnel that shook the air around me. Even though the thunder was loud, it wasn't enough to keep me awake thanks to my heavy eyelids.

For what seemed like the first time in years, my dreams were nonexistent that night. My eyes saw nothing except for a black wall for six hours, and when I finally did awake, I felt more refreshed than I had after a sleep since before I had joined the Navy. Although the makeshift pillow left my head cool and comfortable, my back was stiff from laying against a hard stone floor for a considerable amount of time.

Thunder streaked across the sky again, and even though I was far underground, I could hear it loud and clear as if I was actually standing next to the spot that lightning had struck. As I stood back up from my position on the ground, I noticed that the heavy stream of water had grown larger from the tunnel, actually enough so that the layer of water actually covered the entire stone floor of the path into the cavern I was in. Luckily, I had not been sleeping in the area that the water had begun to rush down, so I wasn't soaking wet.

I lifted my forearm so that I could see my watch to check the time, just to make sure that it was morning and I wasn't going up to the surface when there were most likely still monsters there. It was exactly nine in the morning, in fact, so I began my ascent back up the tunnel toward the surface to build some actual shelter from what I could find.

Since the tunnel was so deep down, I still needed to use my flashlight in order to roughly see where I was going. The water really was coming down at a fast pace, enveloping the soles of my combat boots in cold liquid to remind me of the storm above. Once I could see light from the gaping hole in the tunnel that was the ground, I shut off my flashlight and placed it back in my combat pack before I resurfaced.

As soon as I climbed my way back up to the dirt ground, I took a look up at the sky above me. The rain was falling steadily, and dark clouds blocked the sun from completely shining through. It wasn't dark enough for any of monsters to spawn, I thought, so I was safe to at least make a small house using basic crafting skills that I remembered from the stories of the game.

First things first, though, and that was to get back to the beach where I had spawned into the world. If there was any form of support from ships sailing across the sea, then it would be necessary for me to be within their line of sight. I had run straight through the trees toward the cavern, so if I went back in the opposite direction, then I would find the tree that was missing part of its trunk, and in turn be able to start building some shelter on the beach.

The rain pelted down forcefully, although the dirt didn't turn to mud as much as it normally would have. In fact, except for some especially wet patches, it was relatively dry. This was a virtue considering that I hated to have my shoes wet. Everything else was soaked, though. There was water dripping off of the leaves of trees, running down the wooden trunks, and there was obviously a ton coming down from the dark sky.

About halfway back to the beach on the edge of the island, another one of those giant spiders popped out from behind a tree and stared at me. It's red eyes seemed to examine me carefully, but it made me no effort to attack me like they had last night. In the daylight it must have been passive, not caring about humans enough to try and kill them. This was all too weird, and I wondered what else I would find before help arrived.

Every single minute that I was stuck here, though, the more doubtful I became that help was coming. It didn't matter that I wasn't on the beach like I had planned to be right now, but the fact that I wasn't in any form of human contact now, still, unsettled me deeply. Help would probably be on the ocean, trying to find other islands where people could be. They would find me at some point. I was sure of it.

After about a quarter hour of walking through the storm, I finally reached the sandy beach that ended the forest. The tree that I had begun to mine up was there, floating in the air as if still supported by a full trunk. That was obviously not true to the eye, and yet it still hung there above the ground. There was a large layer of water that lay on top of the last block of the tree, gathering more and more of the rain water that was running down the tree and falling from the leaves because of its growing weight as the rain increased.

There was water now streaking down the sides of my face and my black shirt was literally stuck to my skin because of absorbency for sweat, except this was simply water. I glanced back up at the sky for the millionth time, trying to check on the situation of the weather. It wasn't going to let up anytime soon, so I was going to have to make the shelter that I had planned out earlier. It was simple, really; just get some wood from the trees and build it into a makeshift shack. It didn't have to be fancy, either. A house that basically looked like a box would serve the purpose as well as a four story mansion.

The only thing that I worried about was more of the hostilities returning to attack me again, because this time I was trapped on the edge of the ocean. If they came out from the forest, then I was pinned with my back against the wall and with no hope of surviving. Daytime didn't seem like the ideal for them to be spawning in and trying to kill me, but there had been the spider in the forest. Even though it hadn't been hostile, there might be other creatures that I encountered that did in fact find it in their best interest to slaughter me.

To start off, I had the one piece of wood from the tree trunk. I figured that if I just wanted a little bit of room, then I would need a decent amount of wood. For the smallest house where I wasn't just shut inside of a block of space, I wanted to have it be five blocks long and wide and two blocks tall on the inside, plus a roof on top of that. I did the quick math in my head and determined that I would need eighty two blocks of wood. That would take quite a few trees, and then I remembered that crafting system. Maybe I could craft the wooden trunks into something more practical.

I opened my combat pack and looked at the grids inside. The grid of four on the top also had an arrow coming out of it that pointed to the right, where there was a single box. Just to try and see if it would work, I placed the wooden tree trunk icon inside one of the blocks in the grid. It set into place immediately, and the small block on the other side of the arrow was then filled with another icon of a block of wooden planks with a white number four in the top right corner. Just like I had hoped for, it converted into a more efficient building source by using the crafting thing or whatever that was in my combat pack now.

Knowing that I would need only a fourth of the gargantuan amount that I had thought that I would have needed, I made my way back over to the tree that I had begun to mine up and destroyed the rest of the trunk. It gave me four more of the wooden tree trunks, leaving me with sixteen more to get that would give me more than the eighty two that I needed with a remainder of two extra wooden planks. I proceeded to the next tree and mined it up with my hand, and even though I was beating my fist against a tree, it didn't hurt all that much.

It took three more trees to be chopped down for me to have enough wooden planks to use, and I finished building all of the wood together in my backpack. When I reached sixty four wooden planks, though, the rest of the wood moved into another slot. The stack must have reached its maximum level, I figured, so I finished with eighteen in the other stack. I was ready to begin building my house.

Before I began making my house, I had to dig up a small area in the ground for me to put the floor so that it wasn't literally hanging above the ground. It would be a five by five block area, just like I had planned before, and since the blocks in question were simply dirt and sand, it didn't take much effort for me to dig them up. The rain kept pounding down, and by the time I had finished digging up the ground, it was actually filling with water.

Left with ten blocks of sand and fifteen blocks of dirt inside of my combat pack, I held the smaller stack of the wooden planks. Hopefully what I had predicted would work: if you could destroy things with your hands, then you could put them right back down in other positions. I placed one of the wooden planks in the hole where I had dug up the space for the house, and it instantly stuck there. It had worked! I proceeded to fill up the rest of the hole, which carried me on to the larger stack in my inventory.

Once I was done with that, I stood above one of the blocks in the corner of the wooden area and hopped into the air while simultaneously placing down another wooden block directly under me. I repeated this two more times, which made it so that I was standing on what would effectively be one of the blocks of the roof. From my leverage point, I placed the wooden blocks on top of the edges of the wooden surface all the way around the surface and then filled in the top layer to complete the roof. I was now on top of the roof to my house, and I jumped down from the top onto the dirt ground once more.

My wooden box of a home was now complete, I congratulated myself. It was simple enough where I hadn't had to take very long to do it, and it was good enough where it would provide me effective shelter from the pounding rains and the creatures of the night. The only problem with how I had built it was that there was no way to actually enter it.

Solving that problem was once again simple enough. I walked up to the center of one of the walls and mined up two blocks vertically, which provided a clear entrance into the room. It was dark inside, and I didn't have a light source. Well, I did have my flashlight, but that wasn't very practical for a permanent source of light. It was more for exploring, like in the cavern from before.

The cavern! There had been coal in there. If I could mine up the coal and piece it together with a wooden stick that I could craft together, then I would be able to make a source of light, and hopefully other useful things, too. I would need more wood, I determined, and headed back outside to the edge of the forest where I could get some more wood so that I could craft the proper supplies.

After mining up another couple trees, I headed back inside where I crafted all of the wooden tree trunks into more planks, and then wondered how I would be able to craft anything with such a small grid. I only had four spots that I would be able to fill, and that surely wasn't the minimum. There must be something that I can make in this grid that would enable me to have a larger one, and my first guess was simply filling up the four spots with wooden planks. In the small box on the other side of the arrow, another icon popped up, with the words 'crafting table' under it. That must have been the thing that I was looking for, so I took it and placed it in the back right corner of my wooden box house. On the inside there were only nine spots of ground, so I needed to use my space wisely or expand the house.

With the many wooden planks that I had left, I tried to make something else out of the blocks. What I needed first were sticks, which I would eventually need to make the torches for the inside of the house and the handle for the pick that I needed in order to get the coal out of the cave in the first place. Instinctively, I put two wooden planks on the grid so that one was one slot above the other. It was so simple that a kid could've done it, and the two wooden planks were cashed in four sticks. Next, I had to make a sort of pick. It appeared that when you wanted to make something on the crafting table, the design would have to somewhat resemble what you wanted to create.

Using this theory, I placed two of the sticks in the bottom and center middle spots on the grid and filled the top row with wooden planks. My theory was that this would make a simple wooden pick, and I was correct. The crude outline of the curved blade appeared in the box to the right of the arrow that was on top of the workbench, just like inside of my combat pack. I took the wooden pick for myself and made sure that I had gathered the rest of the wooden planks and sticks that I hadn't used yet, and then stepped back out into the rain.

The water was still coming down heavily, soaking me the instant that I stepped back outside. Even though it was raining, it had been relatively warm before, but now the air was beginning to cool down thanks to the never-ending torrents. With my wooden pickaxe in hand, I headed back the way I had ran for safety the night before toward the cavern that I had seen coal in. About halfway along the path I had taken, I took out my flashlight once again just to be safe in case there wasn't any coal for a while down the tunnel. I honestly couldn't remember just at what point I had seen the black ore set in the stone walls.

There was thunder in the distance, although I had been in a clearing when it struck, and just over the treetops I could see a flash of white lightning. The bright flash lit up the sky, and for a moment I could see through the gray clouds to a see bright blue sky. It faded within seconds, but for a moment that I wouldn't be trapped on this island forever like the reality of it pointed at. There was no way for me to actually confirm that, but it felt better to have that kind of hope inside of me.

At last, I reached the entrance to the dark tunnels that led underground once again, and I flicked on my flashlight and scoured the edges of the stone walls for any sign of coal. It only took a little bit until I found traces of the black ore, and proceeded to mine it out of the wall with my wooden pickaxe. Unlike the blocks from the surface of the world, the coal blocks immediately dropped small pieces of coal as opposed to the entire ore as a block. The vein I had found, however, was very small, containing a lowly two pieces of coal. That was enough for the two wooden sticks that I still had stowed away in my combat pack.

Turning back to the surface, I barely noticed the glint of gold behind me, two small gem-like surfaces within the hollowed out black eyes of the green monsters. Instead, I continued on my way, walking briskly as if I didn't have a trouble in the world. It was exactly the opposite, unfortunately, but there was no way for me to have realized this considering that I hadn't seen the monster when I had turned and continued back to the surface.

While I was walking through the heavy rain, I used the grid inside of my combat pack to quickly finish crafting the torches. Each combination of the coal on top of the wooden stick gave me four torches, which ultimately left me with eight of them. That was more than I could have bargained for. By the time I put my things back away, I was almost back to the beach, probably less than a minute away.

That was when I heard the crack of a branch behind me. I turned quickly to see one of the green four-legged creatures that had been part of the pack of creatures that had been chasing me through the forest the night before. I hated how its mouth twisted down in an open frown, the kind of expression that made your spine crawl. All in all, it really gave you the creeps.

Still, I had no weapon, but it must have been chasing me for a while. I had to think of something to try and get rid of it as soon as possible. However, I wouldn't get the time to try and develop a solution to the impending dilemma as it flashed white all of a sudden and blew up in my face, sending me flying backwards into a tree. My head hit the trunk hard, and I immediately doubled over in midair, falling flat on my face with my hands clutching my stomach. My arms were burning as if they were actually on fire, my hair was singed, and every drop from the torrent acted as acid being dropped onto my skin, burning with corrosion…

I swore to God that the interrogation room had grown so cold that I could see my own breath clouding up in front of me. The black glass seemed to stare at me, waiting for me to continue my story. Hanging my head, I cleared my head to try and carry on. But I couldn't. The pain from the creeper had burned every part of my body, and although lots of food and care would help it soon enough, it had hurt so badly.

My only injury that hadn't been able to have been treated was my knee, and once more it flared up in pain as I thought of the burns I had suffered in the explosion. Beads of sweat rolled down my neck and forehead as I cleared my mind to try and continue, but Cobalt wasn't as patient as I would've liked him to be.

"And then what, Hawkeye?" his electronic voice asked through the speakers in the corners of the interrogation room, demanding I continue.

I didn't want to go on, though. I just wanted to be free of this hell that my life had become thanks to what was supposedly my destiny with the Prophecy of the First Realm, but where had it gotten me? Trapped in some Resistance base with absolutely no way out?

Focusing on my tale helped me go on, though. Because I was about to reach the point that I met the two people that made my life complete.

From the dark oblivion of sleep, I could still hear the pitter patter of rain hitting a solid surface above my head. This wasn't right, as I had been knocked out in the forest where the only shade were the leaves, and the rain would just roll right off of them. My first thought was that the mobs must have taken me prisoner and were holding me in some cave somewhere. Although there was no way for me to know it, that wasn't the case.

My arms still felt like they had been lit on fire, and my legs were weak as if they had been pounded with a hammer repeatedly. Although my ears were ringing slightly, I began to pick up on the sounds of voices. At that moment, I thanked God that they sounded human. Even if they weren't too keen on me being here, I could at least reason with them and hopefully find others that would be more enthusiastic about my arrival.

Even though I wanted to give some sort of indication that I was awake and that they could decide what to do with me now, I found that my throat was completely parched and that my eyes seemed not to want to open up for me. The only good sign of my recovery from whatever kind of shock that I was induced in currently was that my hearing was improving, and I could make out what the other voices were saying.

"People don't just appear, though. They have to be born, and even they start out as little kids and not people our age!" a male voice exclaimed, just hushed enough so that it wouldn't wake me had I still been asleep. "I want to help just as much as you, but we have to be more wary of what this may mean. There could be other people on this island, and if this is the island with the Dungeon of the Oracles under it, then they could be guarding it."

"Well, let's at least see who he is before we jump to conclusions," a girl sighed, and there was a little bit of movement. "When do you think the storm's going to let up?"

"It's been a while, now," replied the first voice. "So there really isn't any telling of when. I hope it's soon, though. We need to get back to the S.S. Boston as soon as possible. Even if this is the island that we're looking for, it's giving me the creeps."

"You've still got the supplies to make the simple boats so we can get back to the ship, right?" the second voice asked.

"Uh, yeah. If we're taking this guy, he better have enough wood to make his own boat," the first voice confirmed. "I don't know if he does, considering how basic this house was. There wasn't even a door until we got here, we had to put that down ourselves so that the mobs wouldn't kill us while we waited out the storm."

The girl laughed a little bit. "That is true, but I'm sure he has more wood. If he needs some, well, look at the giant forest right there!" she joked.

There was a long silence, as they waited while my eyes stayed shut against my will. There was more thunder in the distance, so the storm's center seemed to be moving off in the opposite direction. We, meaning me and the other two people I didn't even know, would soon be home free to figure out a way off the island. They had been discussing the S.S. Boston. That would be a very large ship at sea, right? Maybe they were scouts of sorts on this island.

"Hey Tyler?" the second voice said, her voice going up at the end to indicate that she was trying to get his attention. "Have you thought of the possibility that this guy might be, well, you know…"

"Him?" the first voice said, apparently named Tyler. "No, I didn't really figure that. Do you think that he really might be?"

There was another long silence. "I don't know, but we are going to the Dungeon of the Oracles," the second voice replied, and I could feel pairs of eyes resting on me.

I tried with all of my might to open my eyes, and I finally was able to. Light streamed into my face, as it appeared that they had put up torches around my small house. They were sitting in wooden chairs at the side of my bed, and where the open hole to my house had been, there was now a large wooden door. I looked them over. Tyler was wearing a blue shirt with a small silver badge on his chest, as was the girl, who I would later learn to be Sydney. They wore matching white pants, as well. The Imperial Navy uniforms, although I didn't know this yet.

"Oh, uh, hi!" the girl commented, raising her hand in greeting. "Now that you're awake, well, there's a lot of stuff that we need to fill you in on." She brushed her hair out of her face, and I screwed up my eyebrows. For a second I thought I had seen someone else sitting there, but it had just been an illusion. No, she was dead anyways.

"Most importantly, who we are and why we're here, and why we want to find out the same answers that correspond to you," Tyler snarled, his gray eyes a little hostile at the sight of me. If given the chance, I feared that he would claw out my neck just to protect this girl.

I laid my head back on the pillow on the bed. Great. Interrogations.

_This sort of reminds me of what's going on right now._

Unfortunately, I have the exact same feeling, Cobalt. They stared me down, and I did everything that I could not to look at them, because Tyler seemed to really not like me at all, and I didn't want to get off on the wrong foot with people in their own world. "Jay Richter," I breathed, looking back at them from my bed. My burns began flaring up all over again.

"Richter?" Tyler queried, his face contorted in question. "What kind of name is Richter? Was there something screwed up at your naming ceremony or something?"

"Let's not fight over names, okay?" the girl interjected, giving Tyler a look that clearly said '_shut your face or I'll do it for you_'. "Where exactly are you from, because this isn't anywhere near civilization? By the way, I'm Sydney."

I thought hard about how I could answer that question. "I could say the same of you," I retorted, sitting up in my bed slowly as to not aggravate the burns along my body. It wasn't enough, though, and I winced in pain as my knee began throbbing, too.

She frowned at that response. "Actually, no you couldn't, because we're part of the Imperial Navy, and you don't appear to have any identification that you are a frontiersman."

Identification… "Hold on, I think I have an ID." My hand dove for my pocket, too quickly as my arm burned, and I pulled out a small wallet. Inside was my military identification, and I handed it over to Sydney hastily.

The two of them looked over it, and their eyes narrowed. "What exactly does all of this mean? United States Navy? Are you trying to wage war with the Imperial Nation?" Tyler accused. He might as well have lifted his finger and pointed it right at me.

I shook my head quickly. "No, no, you don't understand, I'm not from around here, I don't know why the world is shaped like this, with all this crafting and stuff, I'm inside a freaking video game and you're accusing me of waging war?!" I exclaimed, speaking so fast that it must have been hard to understand, but I had to clear my name. They were getting it all wrong, all I wanted was to get back home somehow…

Their eyes met briefly, and then Sydney looked back at me. "I think that he is _him_, Tyler. What do we do?" she spoke to her friend, not averting her eyes from me.

Tyler frowned in concentration. "I suppose that we wait out the storm and get back to the ship, taking him with us. There's a lot to say if he isn't lying." With that statement, the two of them stared at me in some sort of pity, and I tried to take in what they were trying to say. What did all of this mean, what, or who, was _him_? There were so many questions, and it seemed that I wouldn't find the answers unless they were proved to be suitable for me to know.

The prospect of that scared me.


	5. Shangri-La

**Hello once more, faithful readers!**

**I just wanted to let you guys know that I'm going through some stuff in real life right now, so the updates are going to be pretty slow. Sorry about that, but I'll still keep up the quality of my writing. Enjoy the chapter!**

**Let the story commence!**

_When the thought of someone's decapitated head upsets you, that is called love!_

_~Nadal from The Dictator_

Chills spread throughout my spine as I frowned, remembering that day where I had met both Tyler and Sydney. The memories of them deeply saddened me, and I wished that they were here with me in this interrogation. I could create a link with them if I wanted to, but my interrogator, whoever Cobalt really was, would become suspicious as to what I was actually doing. Any suspicion from my captives wouldn't be good, so I would have to wait for them to contact me through their own links from where they resided.

But waiting was an awful thing. Why should I wait to see them again if I was possibly waiting for something that would never actually come? What if they died while I was trapped here? There were so many things that could possibly go wrong that the inside of my head writhed in pain as I thought, clutching my head in anger. "Why don't you just kill me now?!" I blurted out, my voice sounding distant. At that moment, it seemed that I couldn't even control what I was saying, but the things weren't good. "Just being trapped here remembering all this is torture enough, it's terrible, and you simply have no idea what I've been through."

Slumping over in my chair as the headache pounded against my skull, Cobalt responded to what I had just said. "That's actually what we're trying to find out at the moment, but there's no way that we'll be able to if you keep persisting to stop at intervals and talk about your problems. We all have problems, Hawkeye, and you're just going to have to learn to deal with yours like the rest of us already have. And you are not going to be killed now, nor will you commit suicide. We will prevent both of these. You are more important than you think that you are, Hawkeye, and you refuse to accept it. Besides, death is a powerful thing that you don't want to mess with," the electronic voice scolded.

"Well, screw that!" I shouted back, gripping my forehead as I reminded myself not to aggravate my own headache. "Kill is a friendly word to me at the moment, for being dead would be much better than any kind of torture that you want to put me through. So don't scold me on the prospects of death and how powerful it is, because I know that. I've seen people die around me, innocent people, people I didn't even know, people I loved dying while I held them as they bled to death…"

My voice left me at the moment, and I remembered for the millionth time Lexi and her death, which seemed like it happened decades ago. I had grown so much thanks to this whole Minecraftia experience, and I feared that I would forget her if I continued my relationship with Sydney so seriously. Why was I thinking about this? Sydney was living and breathing, I loved her, and Lexi was dead anyways. You can't date a dead person.

"Oh, Jesus…" I muttered, astonished that I had just admitted that. It was true, but there would always be a place in my heart for her. I couldn't give up on Sydney, I couldn't give up on Lexi, and it seemed that my entire life wanted to split apart in two strips: before Minecraft, and during Minecraft. And my present day form was stuck in that little niche where it broke apart, a living hell that there was no way out of. In the end, thinking of all these terrible thoughts, I swore never to say that out loud or within my head again.

Staring at the table like some kind of mentally insane person, I tried to clear my head to continue my interrogation. Some parts of my mind, however, screamed at me to continue my rant and never help the Resistance again thanks to all of the distrust that they had built in the last hours while I sat stuck in this interrogation cell. This was all some sort of nightmare.

"If I ever talk about that again," I said out loud, wanting Cobalt to hear, "Please tell me to drop the subject. As another human being, promise me this. The rage is too much for me to think straight when I get to that point. So, please, Cobalt. If you're listening."

Closing my eyes, wanting to fall asleep but knowing that I wouldn't be able to anyways, I let the tears come down my cheeks because it was impossible to hold them back for any longer. Love was tearing me in half, and it was too hard to cope with all of this hellish Minecraft stuff that I was supposed to do at the same time. Who the hell cared about the Prophecy of the First Realm anyways? I would gladly have perished those years ago in place of Lexi, just to save her. But it was all Anonymous' fault when you came back to it, so they had to pay for all that they had done to me and my loved ones, my life.

For now, I had to continue my interrogation. And it comforted me when Cobalt replied a short "Okay," to my request. My eyes remained closed as I tried to stem the tears.

"Thank you," I said quietly, leaning my head back in agony.

_Shangri-La_

_Captain Jay 'Hawkeye' Richter_

_November 19__th__, 2246_

_07:03_

_Sunset Keys_

_The Overworld_

The two survivors let me sleep a little bit longer so that I could get some rest for my many injuries, and when I woke again and the sun was still not in the sky, they gave up trying to wait for me to sleep enough. Instead, they fed me food that tasted as if it had just come off of a proper dinner table as opposed to my rations the Navy had provided. Since I was mainly focusing on trying to rest, my identity remained a mystery in general. At this point, they knew my name, but because of its apparent odd origin, it meant nothing to them.

All of the food that they fed me apparently healed my wounds, further solidifying my belief that this was nothing more than the game it was supposed to be. After prolonged exposure to cooked porkchops and fresh water canteens, my burns slowly started going away as if they were simply being washed off like dirt or grime. Soon enough I was able to move my arms around without any pain, which felt nice after all the time I had spent acting as if I was crippled.

As the sun came over the horizon at eight in the morning, the sky through the small window in the door began getting lighter, even though the heavy rainstorm continued on. It had diminished a little bit since I had woken up in Sydney and Tyler's company in the middle of the night, but it was still cold and wet outside, and I didn't want to have to face any of the mobs in such bad conditions. Although they didn't say anything, Sydney and Tyler seemed to agree.

Once the sun broke, I found the strength to begin speaking, and started off with a simple "Thank you," to them both. At first they were surprised that I was speaking once again, but the two of them stood from the chairs and stretched out. Apparently they had sat there all night, I realized. Now they stared at me, waiting for a proper explanation.

"Thank you, really," I repeated, standing from the bed myself and massaging my arms. The burns had completely faded at this point, much to my jubilancy, and now felt completely relaxed and comforted. "I wouldn't have survived through those burns without you two, I honestly don't know what this world is." I paused for a moment, taking a swig of water from one of the bottles that they had given me. "If you two are assuming that this is true, then what exactly does that mean for me? Am I _him_, or whatever you're talking about? Because I would like to know what is so special about me that my father is dying by causes related to this and me being sucked into Minecraft?"

My voice was becoming a little panicky, and I calmed myself down as the two of them seemed to examine me, deciding whether it was time to explain to me. "Well," Sydney said, breaking the silence at last, "If you really are the Chosen One, then we're going to have to fill you in at one point or another."

Smirking, Tyler replied to that statement. "The Chosen One? Is that really his title?"

Sydney frowned, crossing her eyebrows at him. "Well, yes, I don't see a problem there."

Tyler raised his eyebrows at her, as if someone had just said a suggestive joke and he was appalled in some way. "Don't you think that it's a little bit cliché?"

Rolling her eyes and turning back to me, Sydney continued the speech that changed my life. "It's quite simple, really. A prophecy was made by an Oracle years back that told of a man arriving from an undiscovered Realm that would be our only hope when the Enderdragon returned. Unfortunately, the prophecy was hidden away in the Dungeon of the Oracles, which our party happens to be searching for throughout the Sunset Keys for other purposes right now."

"Hold on," I said, holding my hand up dramatically to stop her in the middle of her speech, "You're forgetting that I don't know what any of this stuff is. What's an Oracle, what is the Enderdragon, what's a Realm, and what are the Sunset Keys?" I exclaimed, feeling like a rambling child with my tremendous amount of questions.

"I'll take this one," Tyler interrupted, showing some enthusiasm to help me understand all of this for once. "An Oracle is a special job that few people get at their Naming Ceremony, which is when all the fourteen year olds go through certain tests and receive a job that bests suits their traits and the needs of the city they live in, as well as a name based on their values, and this is all part of the Reckoning Day procedure. Anyways, an Oracle basically live in a kind of royalty because they aren't suited for any physical or mental labor, but every once in a while they'll create a prophecy randomly regarding something important, like a quest an individual is taking, a person's life, or something that could decide the fate of the world. This has happened only two times before, although the third prophecy along those lines has been created."

"If you're the person that we think that you are," Sydney contributed, pushing her hair out of her face to get a better view of me, "Then that's the prophecy that supposedly regards you and your efforts to save the world."

"A Realm is a dimension in which people live in. There's the Overworld, which is basically normal life and scenery, also holding the Sunset Keys, a series of islands in the Sunset Sea that branch off from the island housing the Temple of the Overworld, which enables easy transport between other Realms. There are five in all, the first being Earth, which is basically just an urban myth for all we know. Then there's the Overworld, then the Aether, a kind of heaven with floating islands high above the surface of the ground, and the Nether, which in turn is a hellish wasteland of caverns and lava that is deep underneath us. Finally, there's the End, which is only accessible through strongholds in the Overworld. Only one of them has been found, but nobody is allowed to go back to the End anyways. Doing so could possibly release the Enderdragon once more prematurely, which for all we know isn't possible, but we need to take every precaution that we can with that thing," Tyler continued.

"Finally, the Enderdragon is the entity that was the subject of the Prophecy of Minecraftia, which was fulfilled twenty seven years ago by Alex Glowstone himself. It's basically the head of all the Endermen, and strived to kill us all until Alex defeated it all those years ago. Too bad I was born six years after that, those were great days for our civilization," Sydney commented, explaining with an invested tone of voice. "But most importantly, the Enderdragon is destined to come back someday to make another attempt at taking over the world." She stopped and looked at Tyler. "That all does seem a little cliché."

"Which basically brings us full circle to your part of the story," Tyler concluded, waving his hands to exemplify his point. "Nobody knows what the Prophecy of the First Realm actually says, but there are small bits of information that have been widespread as urban legends like the concept of Earth. Most of them include the fact that the Enderdragon will be released once more by a man who comes from Earth, and that he'll have to defeat it in order to save the world, the usual stuff." Tyler scratched his wrist a little. "Well, not usual, but kind of expected."

For a few seconds, I had to actually comprehend all that they had just explained to me within my mind, putting the pieces together and dropping my jaw once I understood. This Enderdragon, whose legacy seemed pretty well built and menacing, was apparently going to come back stronger than ever and try and destroy everyone who lived in this world once more, and I was the only thing standing in its way. Shivers went down my spine as the thought invaded my brain, making it impossible to think of anything else at the moment. "Expected? As in this kind of thing has happened numerous times before?" I queried, confused and frightened.

"Not specifically the Enderdragon, that's only happened once before, but there have been numerous prophecies regarding heroes of Minecraftia. It seemed that this one was no exception, but obviously that isn't the case, according to your origins," Tyler replied, talking as if this were no big deal at all.

"All in all, you came at the right time to the right place, considering that you're going to need to go to the Dungeon of the Oracles," Sydney commented, standing up and looking out the window of the door. "The rain looks like its holding up. We should get back to the ship."

"Wait, though," I exclaimed, holding my hand up as if it were physically stopping her from proceeding with other tasks. "Why exactly do I have to go to this Dungeon of the Oracles, and what even is it?" Again, I felt like an ignorant kid who's questions would never end.

"The Dungeon of the Oracles is a sacred place in the Sunset Keys, supposedly hidden under one of the islands. Every prophecy ever spoken is stored there under carefully watch of ubiquitous spirits. It's almost like the Prophecy of Prophecies in what used to be Magnam Civitatem, but the prophecies don't actually have to be written down. They're simply there as soon as an Oracle from around the world speaks one, requiring no physical labor," she explained, folding her arms and waiting for me to ask another question. I pretended that I knew what all that meant, even though I only got about half of it, and shrugged to show I was done. The gesture felt awkward, and indeed the air felt a little different after that.

She pushed open the wooden door, revealing the damp air and grassy ground that still was surprisingly dry, just like it had been yesterday actually during the rainstorm. There were still a couple drops coming down from the sky, but nothing like they had been the day before. "I assume that everything that you own is in your backpack since you didn't have a chest back in there?" Sydney asked, and I nodded in reply. There hadn't been much to collect over the last day or two since I had had no idea how to do anything in this world.

Once Tyler had come out of the house and shut the door, he ordered "Weapons out." The two of them both took out neat looking iron swords that shone in the rays of sunlight that penetrated the somehow still cloudy sky. Since my pistol was apparently useless against the mobs that inhabited this weird world, I left myself empty handed. The Five Seven that rested within my backpack with my spare wood, dirt, and sand, along with my supplies from the Navy, was without a purpose in the situation that I had found myself in.

"Okay, let's get back to the water without disturbing any creepers or spiders. I don't want to make this expedition deadly in any way whatsoever," Tyler suggested, and I followed him without needing to be told twice. Without a weapon that would work against the mobs of this world, I would be very vulnerable if separated from people who were experienced in surviving the terrors and perils of the night. The experience of the creeper burns from yesterday had seriously scarred me, both physically on my arms and mentally as it showed another element that I hadn't in four years.

_If that's what you told me not to talk about because it gets you riled up, then I advise that you steer clear of that subject._

It took less than thirty seconds to reach the water, no waves rippling across its surface as it merely stood sterile next to the sandy beach. Both of them placed small boats big enough to hold one person each in the water, where they floated atop the crystal clear liquid. They stared at me expectantly, and I shook my head. "Like I said, I don't know how to craft anything in this world whatsoever, but it would help if you taught me," I told them dumbly, scratching my head.

On the sand next to the water, Sydney placed down a crafting table like the one that I had left behind in my makeshift house. I walked over to the nine square grid that was engraved on the top of the identical workbench, and looked back up at them. Sydney was smiling encouragingly, while Tyler was looking down at his watch, clearly annoyed at my ignorance. It wasn't exactly my fault that I didn't know how to do anything in this world. "Just align wooden planks in the shape that you think a boat would be in," Sydney suggested.

A boat would have to have sides so that the water didn't spill in, a hull or floor for the same reason, and a space in the middle so that someone could occupy it. Theorizing that this was what it would look like, I put the wooden planks across the bottom row and on the sides of the middle row. In the small space on the right of the grid popped up an icon of a small boat that looked like the ones that Sydney and Tyler had placed in the ocean. I picked it out and it was stored into my backpack while the wood that I had used in the crafting recipe seemingly disappeared. I remembered that this was because it was what had actually been used to make the boat that I now held in my hand. Walking back to the side of the water while Sydney mined up her crafting table once more, I placed the small boat on the surface of the ocean, where it floated peacefully on the right of the others' identical boats. It was simple, made of wooden planks with low sides that offered just enough room so that the water wouldn't spill in while it sailed throughout the waters of the ocean. The space where the person was supposed to sit in was very limited, but offered me enough space to squirm around a little bit.

"So how far away is the ship that you guys are coming from, anyways?" I queried as they reached out for their boats to pull them closer to the sand so that they could hop into them. I emulated them, wondering for a second why there were no oars or engine, or really anything that would enable the driver to proceed through the water.

As I rested down into the wooden seat within the small boat, feeling a bit uncomfortable, Tyler answered, "It shouldn't be too far offshore, but the exact measurement is a mystery to me. I'd say it would take less than fifteen minutes to reach it."

Fifteen minutes? How fast were these things if there wasn't any actual source of force that would make them go forward? I gripped the front of the wooden side, my fingers hanging over the cold water that felt no different than the light rain showers from the sky. A sort of electrical current flowed through my body, and I instantly began to move forward a little bit. Tyler and Sydney had already proceeded to gain some ground on me, but when I wanted the boat to go faster, it did just that, cutting a seam into the water that actually rippled throughout the blue liquid, unlike the splashes from the steady rain. Within a few seconds I was zooming alongside Tyler and Sydney, the splash of seawater hitting me in the face and soothing whatever was left of my burns from the creeper the night before.

The result of all this was an adrenaline rush unlike one that I had ever experienced before. Obviously, I had been in helicopters above the ground, flying above the surface of the Earth, but this was much different. That had simply been something I had done as part of war, to go on and kill other people mercilessly. This connection that I seemed to have with the boat didn't seem possible, but it drifted in whatever direction I wanted it to.

"I haven't felt a rush like this in years!" I shouted over the wind that our boats cut through like a knife through butter, smiling happily as the three of us proceeded across the ocean. Tyler and Sydney took a slight return at one point, and I made the same procedure just as swiftly and easily as they had, and yet they had done it many times before obviously.

Oceanic tides rippled pleasantly under my boat, making me wonder why I had ever been stationed on the land back during my service in the Navy. It was boggling to the mind why someone who felt so comfortable on water would be stationed to fight on land. Plus, the ruins of civilizations from before the war had started were constant reminders of what my life could have been like had it not been for the fighting between our ancestors. Earth might have been in a better shape, my life could have been different, Lexi and my dad wouldn't have died because of the war's effects. My blood boiled, but it was instantly cooled back down due to my overall elation and the cold water that we were sailing through.

"That's what I said the first time I tried it!" Sydney shouted back, but I was too focused on keeping control of my boat to actually look at her while she spoke. "I was fourteen, and my father wanted to show me what it was like. He made minecarts and boats for a living, and I had ridden the former many times before because of the abundance of mines in Los Angeles, the city I lived in when I was young. You probably don't know the geography of our world since you come from Earth, but that's pretty far inland, near the Far Lands. We have a bunch of mountains there, it's probably the country's main source of quite a few minerals."

Los Angeles, far inland? Since this ocean was apparently to the west of the mainland, this world was definitely corresponding to the continents of Earth. "What's the port city that you guys are living in right now again?" I asked.

"Novum Eboracum," replied Tyler over the heavy winds that ripped past our heads as we sped along through the water. "Why?"

"Just wondering," I said simply. Novum Eboracum… I had taken a couple of Latin classes before I had joined the Navy, and if my memory was correct, that meant New York. It couldn't be a coincidence that there were cities named New York, Los Angeles, and the name of the ship that we were heading towards as I thought was named the S.S. Boston. Surely Notch had implemented these names as a sort of memory of where he had come from, the place that his disciples were naïve of. Someday, hopefully, I could change that and teach them about Earth.

For now, though, the wind and water blew past us in the early hours of the morning, the sun now rising at our backs to make small rainbows that appeared in the mist above the water. Now that the sun had lit up the world around us, I could see a large shape in the distance above the water. It was tall, with an enlarged wooden hull and large white masts, probably made of a thin cloth of sorts. It seemed very medieval, although the boat that I was speeding along in at the moment reminded me that this place had at least some technological advances.

"Is that the ship that we've been looking for?" I shouted over the heavy wind as we grew closer, slowing down a little bit so that we didn't crash right into the ship once we had reached it.

"Yeah!" I heard Tyler's voice yell, the water blocking out anything else he might have said. The waves were growing increasingly loud as we approached the ship, which actually appeared to be moving. Tyler's voice came back over the wind now, sounding a little bit surprised at something. "Why is it moving? The anchor isn't down for some reason, maybe the water out here is too deep for the anchor to reach down to."

Our small convoy of boats reached the side of the ship within the next minute, slowing up against the side where wooden ladders were embedded into the side of the large ship. I took another moment to marvel at the majesty of the S.S. Boston as it floated gracefully in the deep ocean water, its name painted in a neat white cursive font on the starboard side of the ship, which we had approached on. Tyler and Sydney kept moving their boats forward with no fear of being crushed by the large figure until they found a grip on the ladders. Their grasp was strong enough that they both pulled themselves up onto the ladder, destroying their boats respectively with their fists simply, and the wood that splintered apart due to it breaking was absorbed into their inventories. I did the same thing, hooking onto the side of the ship and collecting what was left of my boat from a relatively safe perch above the water.

Once I had accomplished that, I climbed my way up the ladder to the deck of the ship, hoisting myself over the wooden railing and finding my footing once more. Sydney and Tyler were standing there, grabbing my arms so that I was completely on the ship, safe and sound. Out in the water, there had been a sense of fear of simply being out there with no other support except for your simple boat that looked like it could fall apart at any second under your weight.

"Welcome aboard the S.S. Boston, the largest trading ship in the Imperial Navy," Tyler boasted, holding his arms above his head to show emphasis on the large vehicle that we were now standing on. "I'm sure this is much bigger than any ships in your United States Navy."

The comment almost sounded like a threat, but I knew better than to consider it just that yet. Instead, I smirked at the thought of the giant steel aircraft carriers that made up our militant forces at sea, comparing it to this wooden vessel which most likely didn't carry more than thirty people at a time. "I wouldn't say that," I replied, deciding again to keep details of my identity a well hidden secret from anyone who lived here, even Sydney and Tyler. Even if I trusted them more than anyone else here, there was still the fact that they were mainly strangers that had happened to want to help me on my deadly adventure. "But this is certainly a nice ship."

"That is definitely an understatement!" shouted a new, boisterous voice, from the upper deck. The voice was slightly gruff as well, and suited the man who owned it well. The man had graying hair and a scruff beard, as well as a black eye patch that wrapped around his head and covered his left eye. I looked for a peg leg or even a hook for a hand, but this was the end of his pirate attributes. "The S.S. Boston is the grandest ship of them all, and I'm happy to be captaining it," he continued, holding out a hand in greeting. "Captain Waters, at your service. But please, just call me Mike."

I gripped his hand and gave three hearty shakes, although he controlled them with a hearty enthusiasm. "Jay Richter," I greeted him shortly, breaking eye contact awkwardly to take another look at the masts that towered over us from our position on the deck.

"Richter?" he queried, his face confused when I looked back at him, his eyebrows seeming to twitch in confusion. It looked odd, as if he were doing it on purpose to intimidate me somehow. "What kind of last name is that?"

"That was basically my reaction as well," Tyler interjected, reminding me that Sydney and Tyler were still standing to my right. It amused me that they were criticizing my last name while his name was literally just Waters. Richter was normal, Waters was not. Well, it actually might have been a legitimate name for someone on Earth, but Richter was even more obvious to be a common name. Part of me wanted to punch Tyler in the gut for trying to sell me over.

"I'd assume that he had an improper naming ceremony, but I don't think that that's quite the case," Mike commented, frowning a little bit in confusion. Then the realization that I wasn't actually part of his crew fully set in. "You're not from the Imperial Nation, are you?"

This was apparently the country that made up this world, or whatever you wanted to call it. I smirked that he might actually challenge me if he found out that I wasn't from this supposed Imperial Nation, and I decided to tell him anyways. Even if he did want a fight, he'd be bringing a knife to a gun fight, considering my Five Seven tucked away in my backpack. "What, are you going to make me walk the plank or something?" I replied boldly.

Mike stared at me for a minute or two, examining every trait on my body and storing all of the information within his brain to use for later. "I think that I like you. Not that many people are brave enough to stand up to someone with as much influence as me," he complemented me, his frown abruptly turning into another grin.

"The only reason that's true is because I have no idea who you and your medieval buddies are," I muttered under my breath, but none of them heard and instead beckoned for me to follow the captain as he walked briskly to the stairs that led back up to the upper deck of the wooden ship. For something that had been built in a world as lowly in technological advancement as this, it was pretty impressive. Men worked all over the place, adjusting the lengths of different ropes that were connected to the masts, some of them measuring wind and other weather attributes, more still working on polishing and sharpening weapons. There were swords, bows and arrows, even a few daggers and knives that could be used for close quarters combat. My own was still in its small case embedded in the side of my combat boot.

At the top of the stairs, Mike walked over to the wooden wheel, which had been occupied by another person wearing the same outfit as Tyler and Sydney at the moment, but was immediately emptied for the captain to take grip of the wheel. "Scouting report, you two?"

"Well, uh," Sydney started, brushing the hair out of her face uneasily. "Turns out that that island wasn't Shangri-La either, Captain. Rather, it was just another random chain of the Sunset Keys. We must be getting close, though. I think that us finding Jay was a step in the right direction, however."

Captain Waters was obviously unsettled by this news. "How, though? Sure, it is valuable to be finding Loners who decided not to follow civilization's rules, but it isn't bringing us any closer to finding Shangri-La and the Dungeon of the Oracles. The others in the Imperial Battalion gave me one month's worth of supplies from taxpayers, and we only have a week left until we'll be committing a crime by looking for this island. And dammit, I want to find it! So don't tell me that it's going to be alright, because the way things are going, they won't be!" he exclaimed, ranting on and on while he steered the ship without trying.

"Sir, I think that we're getting off on the wrong foot with the newcomer," Tyler alerted him, and I reminded myself to thank him for showing at least some level of courtesy for me and my existence. Piecing together the puzzles myself so that they didn't have to explain to me like an idiot another thing about this world, I figured that this Dungeon of the Oracles that I was supposed to go to was on Shangri-La, and it appeared that it wasn't easy to find this specific island at all. Maybe it had never been found, shrouded in mysteries and legends. But this ship was committed to finding the island right now through funding by its government, and the crew was growing very impatient with their lack of success. Thoughts of mutiny seemed a little too dramatic from what I could tell, but what did I know about how these people felt?

Captain Waters seemed to cool down a little bit, processing that he was indeed showing a side of himself that he didn't want me to see. "Yes, I see what you mean. This man looks a little tired, why don't the two of you escort him to one of the free rooms downstairs so that he can at least get another change of clothes and sleep if he needs to," he suggested to Tyler and Sydney, clearly a request to be alone for a few minutes. If I had been leading such an unsuccessful mission and had just received as bad of news as Tyler and Sydney had just brought, I would be pretty downright depressed as well.

Even though I wasn't close to being tired considering I had just slept for half of the last two days, I followed my two escorts back down the stairs from the upper deck and through a door that led into a leisure room, which apparently doubled as a mess hall and led to a long, large room that was filled with cannons to be used for battle. Behind one of the couches was a small trapdoor, and Sydney opened it up and allowed me to climb down into a hallway full of doors into dormitories for the different seamen.

"Try to be relatively quiet while we find a room for you that isn't full," she warned me once she had closed the trapdoor once more, "The people who work the night shift on the deck are sleeping as we speak."

As we walked down the hallway, I had one more question to ask. "Does Captain Waters ever sleep, considering his position and all?"

"Not anymore," Tyler responded glumly.

We reached the room that I would claim after a few more moments of awkward silence as I reflected on the state of the crew. Obviously they were going through some tough times on this ship, and the people were beginning to lose faith in their captain and any hope at success. Hopefully I would be able to change that somehow if I really was this important. If they were looking for this Dungeon of the Oracles that I also needed for whatever reason, then there was no point to not double dipping. I would help them find what they were looking for in return for a place to stay temporarily and learning what my real fate was.

"The rooms aren't that much since there are so many of us on the ship at one time, but you do get the most important things," explained Sydney, showing me my room. "There's a bed, a crafting table, a furnace, a chest, and a desk and chair. Like I said, just the basics."

Even if it was just the basics in their eyes, I thought that the room looked really nice. The walls were a polished birch wood, with a light color that made the rest of the room stand out. The red woolen blanket on the blanket popped out in particular, along with the dark grey and black furnace that sat in the corner of the room next to the workbench. I sat down on the bed and made myself comfortable while they stood near the door, looking around at the room as if they were envious that I got the new one.

The tension was so thick that you could cut it with a knife. There were many other things that you could cut with knives, and it made my stomach rumble as I remembered the many foods that were probably too complicated to cook here, unless the furnace was actually technologically advanced unlike everything else. I heavily doubted that possibility, but you never knew. In particular I missed Mexican food, the tacos and quesadillas that were always stuffed with melted cheese and grilled chicken. A burger would also be very good right now, but I didn't think that they would have tomatoes or lettuce if their wilderness was filled solely with trees and no other form of wildlife, no bushes or shrubs. There had been a few flowers, but just a few that made me wonder why they were even there if they weren't paired with useful plants other than trees. The more about this game I learned about, the more I thought the developers were idiots.

Thinking on an empty stomach makes you very delusional sometimes, and it was that side effect that triggered me to try and cheer up the two sailors who stood glumly by the door, their arms folded and their faces frowning at nothing in particular except for bitter life itself. That was a very sad and unproductive way to spend time. "Guys, I swear to you that we'll find the Dungeon of the Oracles, no matter how hard it may be, by the time that your funds run out. If we know it's out there and it's my destiny to find it someday, then I'm sure that this was meant to happen," I rambled, barely corresponding what I was saying.

Tyler stared at me with a look of skepticism that I found hard to ignore, staring at me like daggers penetrating my skin. "What do you mean by that?" he asked bitterly.

Grinning wildly now like a madman, the answer seemed so obvious to me now. And me only. "This is meant to happen, you two! All of the stars are aligning perfectly because the prophecy basically orchestrates the possibilities for them to. It's almost weird how everything is being put together perfectly, I'm assuming," I continued.

Madman was definitely the right description for me at the moment if you could only use one. "Almost weird?" Tyler replied, raising an eyebrow. "I think that you're trying too hard to make a case for yourself."

"Look, I don't know if you're still tired from last night, but I suggest that you get some sleep or something, and change into uniform. You can't go around wearing whatever solid black stuff you have on right now, it makes you look like you're from a ghetto or something," Sydney explained, smiling unlike Tyler who looked seriously annoyed at this point. "There should be some changes in the dressers under the bed, just slide them out and keep your clothes. You can wear them once you get off the ship from duty. Anything I can get you?"

"Just some food, if you don't mind. I don't know why I'm so hungry, but I am," I shrugged, looking back up from my feet mischievously. I was absolutely going crazy, trapped inside of a game. Both of them exited through the wooden door, and as it slowly shut, I pulled the small chest out from under the bed. Inside were three sets of the Imperial Navy uniform that everyone on the ship was wearing. I realized that I was the only one on the entire ship not wearing those garments.

There were many thoughts bouncing around in my head that I tried hard to control, but it was becoming harder than ever as the fact that I was trapped inside of this game kept setting in further in my brain, the fact that I was actually in a video game tearing at my brain. Maybe it wasn't just me confused at the world around me, but something else.

My subconscious was a nervous wreck, and the thought surfaced that I liked Sydney a little bit too much. My heart belonged to Lexi, forever and ever, I kept trying to tell myself. It was just that she was dead Sydney was here, beautiful physically and instantly accepting of me even considering my abnormality. And besides, from what I could decipher, she and Tyler were an item. It wouldn't serve me any good to make Tyler not like me even more.

All the thinking made me want to tear out my heart, I couldn't decide between moving on or never forgetting those I had lost… Why was life so hard on me?


	6. Dungeon of the Oracles

**Hello once more, faithful readers!**

**Today I am especially excited to bring you this new chapter, because it is the longest chapter for any story that I have ever written! Indeed, it surpasses the mark by more than four hundred words, and so I figured I might as well inform you guys of this really cool feat.**

**Another really cool feat that I am excited for is the Chicago Blackhawks' streak to open this year's NHL season. As of last night, we beat the Minnesota Wild 5-3, and that extends our streak of most games to start a season without a regulation loss to twenty three. It doesn't seem like anyone can beat us, and I am completely fine with that. Even if you aren't a hockey fan, make sure that you check out the Hawks' superb start to the season.**

**And now, without further ado, let the story commence!**

_Far away, this ship is taking me far away, far away from all the people who'll care if I ever die._

_~Starlight by Muse_

"Every story needs some failure at romance, don't they?" Cobalt asked sarcastically through the metallic speakers. "Even stories that are part of war interrogations."

"It's not easy, you know," I responded with hostility, glaring at the black window angrily. "Having to deal with all of this bullshit, and then being sent out to war. The field is a nasty place, and I've experienced things that no one else ever has. So don't mock me, because if you haven't noticed, I've been through a lot in the last two months."

"Fine, please continue the story," Cobalt replied, waiting for me to continue.

"Don't worry about not getting enough information," I countered, my face burning a little bit in a mix of anger and embarrassment. That I had to go through all of this awkwardness was tearing me apart. After all, a lot of these things were things I thought that I would never have to talk about again, but I had to buy time from the Resistance interrogators. Extending my story to its full length was the best way that I could think of at the moment. "We're just getting to the good part of it all."

_Dungeon of the Oracles_

_Captain Jay 'Hawkeye' Richter_

_November 19__th__, 2246_

_10:47_

_Sunset Keys_

_The Overworld_

The Imperial Navy uniform wasn't all that uncomfortable, but I would have preferred normal combat attire. The kind of stuff that I wore on missions for the United States Navy, and not this getup that made me feel like I was an actor playing the role of a seaman. Now I waited in my new quarters within the hull of the ship, pacing around my bed in a craze. It had been a considerable amount of time since I had been wearing royal blue shirts.

Sydney and Tyler had gone up to get some food for me, and I silently thanked them for that. My stomach felt like it was going to split into pieces at any second, at the expense of me losing my lunch. It wasn't seasickness, but rather I was just nervous about my situation. The prophecy that concerned me was going to be found within the week, I was sure of it, or the S.S. Boston would have to turn back to Novum Eboracum without its goal achieved. My arrival was obviously a sign of hope for the others on the ship, but it didn't do that much to lift their spirits.

After what was about five minutes, the door opened back up to reveal Tyler and Sydney. She was carrying a bowl of something while Tyler was biting into an apple. "It's mushroom stew. It's actually really good, it helps calm the senses," she explained, handing me the wooden bowl with a spoon of the same material resting in it. I took a spoonful of it and felt the hot liquid trickle down my throat. It tasted salty, and small lumps of the vegetable made it a little harder to just slurp down.

Sitting on my bed, I ate the stew while the others stood by the wall again, watching with anticipation as if waiting for me to make my next move. I looked up about halfway through the bowl of soup, making eye contact with both of them. "Do you guys need something?" I asked.

They immediately shifted their gaze awkwardly, refusing to admit that they had been staring at me while I ate. "No, just come back upstairs once you're done," Tyler shrugged, wrapping his fingers around the handle of the wooden door. "You'll have to go through some combat training tests if you're to help us temporarily in the Navy."

With that, I was left alone once again in my room, isolated from the rest of the people who had been living in this world their entire lives. The awkwardness never seemed to want to peak, did it? Finishing my bowl of stew, I opened my combat pack and took out the folder that had sucked me into this animated world. It once more looked like a normal manila folder.

Sitting on the bed, I watched the top of the folder for about two or three minutes, waiting for another message from Notch to be relayed back to me. Of course there was none, and I hadn't actually expected there to be one. But it would have been nice to have had some sort of contact from him, considering that I was completely lost at the moment. Unfortunately, there was no sign of either the red writing or a video message from Notch, so I stowed it away in my backpack and prepared to head back upstairs for their supposed combat training. As if I needed to be going under tests on my physicality, I had been serving with the SEALs for four years now.

With everything loaded in my backpack, including my Five Seven and the resources I had picked up on the island, as they would probably be useful for when we did actually reach Shangri-La. I opened the door back into the hallway and exited the bedroom, now in the large corridor that led between the different quarters for all the crew members. Most of the doors were closed, although there were a couple open that showed rooms similar to mine with people milling around inside them. The difference was that there were different pictures on the walls, posters and other decorations like that, making the rooms look like a kid's.

Up the wooden ladder and back into the commons area, Sydney and Tyler were sitting on two chairs opposite each other, speaking quietly. They stood as soon as they saw me, halting their conversation. "I suppose that we should go up to the deck where the different tests are," Sydney suggested, and the two of them led the way back up the stairs.

I held my arm over my eyes as we reached the surface of the ship, the sun shining brightly and reflecting off of all the water that splashed up whenever the ship hit a small wave. "We have a group out right now inspecting another island about two hundred meters in that direction," Tyler informed me, pointing to the west. Indeed, the silhouette of a land mass was visible in that direction. "Hopefully that's Shangri-La, or else I don't know if we'll ever find it."

The depressing mood setting back in, I quickly changed the subject back to my tests. "So where am I supposed to go?" I asked them, scratching the back of my head nervously as I surveyed the many crew members pacing around anxiously on the deck.

"First would be the vertical climb, I suppose," Sydney suggested, walking to the front of the ship where a large wooden pillar held up the front mast. "You'll have to climb to the top of the structure without falling using just your arms and legs. There are some grooves in the pillar so it shouldn't be that hard if you're actually in the military."

I walked up to the base of the wooden pillar and fit the tips of my finger into a groove a couple feet up, and then repeated the process with my other hand. Once I was about double my height up the pole, I glanced back down casually. "And how are you guys scoring this, because I don't want to have to climb up this thing for nothing!" I asked, considering that I was still very close to the others and didn't need to use a loud voice for any reason.

"I'll be judging you, based on my eye and my eye only," Captain Waters growled, walking over slowly from the other side of the ship as if he had a peg leg, which I could clearly see that he didn't. After all, that would make this whole pirate theme a little too cliché, wouldn't it? What would be next, a hand for a hook and a bunch of eye patches? "If you think that's unfair, then you can talk to the ship's human resources guy."

"And who would that be?" I queried, now climbing fluidly while keeping my feet in the grooves as well to make sure that I didn't slip and fall down painfully.

"That would be me, again," Captain Waters chuckled, staring up at me while I made my way up the pillar. "No one's run the tests in a while, but you'll make good entertainment while we wait for the next search party to come back." The sound of the people talking far below me was now drowned by the blood pumping through my ears, adrenaline flowing through my veins that powered me to continue up the tall pillar. It was comparably to the classic rope climb tests that they would have back on Earth, except this was much easier because the wooden pillar had unintentional grooves that served as foot and handholds for the climber. I supposed that they had simply been made thanks to wear and tear over the course of many years, and the people maintaining the ship had decided to leave them there for precisely the purpose they were serving to me right now as I climbed up the pillar.

There weren't any birds, even seagulls that would flock around our ship considering our proximity to the island visible on the western sky. Now, even just halfway up the wooden pillar that held up the ship's front mast, I could see the island clearly on the starboard side of the ship by turning my head right. There appeared to be a very thick green rainforest out on the island that directly bordered the small sandy beach. Unfortunately, I couldn't tell whether the search party had actually reached the beaches without binoculars.

Continuing on my treacherous climb, I couldn't even hear the talking of the people far below me, their voices drowned out by the rustle of wind in my ears. I was probably about twenty blocks up above the deck of the ship, which if I remembered correctly was enough to knock the life out of you upon dropping and then impact on the wooden ground. My climbing was so fluid that it was hard for me not to believe that I was part of the game as well and that I hadn't just been sucked in from the real world, that I might be one of these people.

At this height there were now ropes that tied together the large masts to help me on my way up to the crossbar that extended the masts in two different directions so that they would spread out and pick up wind. Assuming that this was my goal, I flew from one crack in the pillar to another, some of them as abundant as three within a foot of space whereas I would sometimes have to reach my arm all the way up to another two blocks up in order to get a decent nook in the design for me to support myself on.

It was about ten minutes until I reached the crossbar, pulling myself on top of it with my arms and then standing on it, leaning against the wooden pillar that led up to my level, using it as my only form of balance at this height. The wind wasn't much more intense at the height above the wooden deck, although it made me feel alive in some way to be this high off the ground and thriving. It wasn't just every day that you got to be so tall without anything to hold you down.

Even though this was definitely a little bit nerve wracking to be standing atop this high wooden pillar, the white cloth masts billowing in the wind below me, I wasn't that scared. After all, as a Navy SEAL, I had certainly done my fair share of dangerous things as part of my service to actually aid the Resistance in the war against Anonymous back on Earth, but this was something completely different. Ships like this weren't commonly used in this age of high grade military technology, and before this I had never even seen most of their versions of things.

"Jay!" I heard someone's voice shout at the top of their lungs from the deck of the ship far below me, and I turned my head so that my left ear was hanging directly over the large drop. Actually balancing myself up over the large drop would be potentially suicidal. "Next test is swimming! Jump off the ship and get back on by swimming to the edge!" The voice was Sydney's, I confirmed with myself after listening to the second set of speech.

The only way to get directly to the water from up here was the express way back down. The more I thought about it, the more sensible it became as I wouldn't be able to climb along the same wooden pillar back to the ground, and I also wouldn't be able to jump to the deck of the ship without sustaining major injuries and possibly death. So getting wet seemed to be the only option, and I began inching my way across the crossbar toward the water to prepare.

The crew below had pulled the masts back up so that the ship stopped in position, making it easier for me to crawl along the wooden crossbar. It's edge hung over the water, a long drop that I was now used to. Looking down still made my stomach do a flip, enough of a fall to make me die. I was definitely sure of it now, continuing on my hands and knees until I was suspended high above the Sunset Sea. The sun shone into the water, effectively turning it into a crystal-like surface far below. If I slipped now, I would simply fall into the water.

Standing up slowly, I took a deep breath and stepped to the edge of the crossbar, where the tied ropes reached their knot and marked the way for a forty or more block fall into the ocean below. I silently thanked God that I was high above the others already so that they weren't cheering for me or anything like they did in boot camp. That just made the suspense even harder to deal with for the person about to jump into the water far below. After all, the last thing a person needed was for a drop of that magnitude to be made even more stressful. The next thing I knew, I stopped thinking as my toes hung over nothing but air.

There was the smallest bit of wind at the moment, not nearly enough to send me toppling down unless I let it. It was blowing north anyways, and I was diving to the east. Remembering to make sure to get enough oxygen before I was submerged underwater, I took a baby step and then jumped off of the wooden crossbar of the ship.

Extending my arms into a position that I would enter the water cleanly, I closed all my airways as the sky plummeted past me, the wooden pillar that I had climbed up on the edge of my vision as the blue wall of water neared me. For a brief moment I heard the encouraging shouts of the crew members as I passed the deck, and just like that I hit the water.

Another flaw in this game was that there was no salt in the water, and simply it felt like the fresh water that you would drink out of a glass. The dark wooden hull of the ship was visible through the water thanks to the sunlight that shone through it, lighting my way to the surface. Pushing the water on the sides of me, I head broke the surface, my hair matted down with the sopping wet water. And right there, treading water in the middle of the ocean, I began to laugh. This was the kind of fun that I never got to have since joining the Navy, and I had forgotten how much I had loved it. This was a rude awakening of sorts, and all through this world that all seemed like a dream. This world of extravagant stories and legends, of prophecies and heroes, and most importantly a link to my father that I needed to find.

Remembering that I had to actually reach the ship once more in order to pass this section of the test, I began swimming freestyle until I reached the wooden hull. There were heads of crew members leaning over the side of the ship, most of them cheering me on in the way that I was glad that they hadn't when I was back on the top of the crossbar, awaiting the plunge. Now I absorbed their cheers as fuel to help me reach the hull of the ship. It only took a minute or so, and I touched my hand to the wooden boat as it drifted aimlessly in the water. There were numerous ledges in the design of the wooden boat on its sides, and I grabbed one of these to pull myself out of the water and continue my tests.

The physics of water worked quite oddly within this game, I realized. For about five seconds, I was drenched in cold water, and then it seemed slide back off me in sheets with an odd tickling sensation that I felt all over my body, even through clothes. And just like that, all of the extra weight and temperature adjustment based on the water covering me went back to normal, and all I felt was the wooden handholds under my fingers and a faint breeze on my bare arms and exposed flesh on other parts of my body.

While I climbed up the side of the ship towards the others as they waited for me on the deck, the boat stopped completely once it hit a large wave in the water pushing towards the island in the distance. The sea sprayed its water into my face, cooling me down amid the hot sun that threatened to dehydrate. It wouldn't be quite that easy for nature to take its toll on me, however, and I kept pushing upward towards the deck.

At last my fingers grasped the railing, and I launched myself over and fell on my knees back on the deck, my breaths short and quick. The others stared at me, and Captain Waters walked directly up to me. "That was a good set of tests," he complemented me, and then screwed his face up into a frown, as if he were trying to be unhappy. "Then again, it was only two tests. Next up is strength, and since we're stopped, it'll be easy to test you."

The next test for me was simple: to raise the back masts and make sure that I could literally pull my weight around the ship. There were a few ropes that I had to pull and tie up while under constant pressure from the heavy cloth masts on the crossbars high above the ship's deck. By the end of that test, the crew had gone back to work while Captain Waters continued to examine me with Tyler and Sydney standing to the side, watching me. I had also broken a sweat, and the tests continued.

Over the next hour I accomplished many tasks for him while he took mental notes of my abilities and things that I needed to work on. However, he had become a very happy man when he saw that none of the tests were falling into the latter category. I could wield a sword well, even though I didn't exactly like using it. Speed in running was no problem, and neither was endurance. Both of those were tested by having me simply run laps around the ship continuously. Swimming and climbing had already been covered in the joint test at the very beginning when the crew watched me. And for the first time since I had boarded the S.S. Boston, Captain Waters was smiling at the prospect of me working for him.

"This is the last test, Jay," he explained to me a while later, taking the iron sword that I had been using to parry him. Personally I thought that my footwork in sword fighting was nothing like he had shown me to be expertise, but apparently he hadn't noticed in his jubilation. "All you have to do is the bow and arrow test, and you'll be fully certified to work with us."

Captain Waters led me over to a target, the typical bull's-eye pattern painted upon it with different colors. "Just make sure that your accuracy is fine, it shouldn't too hard if you're even half as good with a bow as you are with a sword," he assured me, handing me the sleek wooden weapon and a quiver full of five arrows. I grasped the bow and he stood back with Tyler and Sydney, and many of the crew members turned to us while I prepared to finish my training. The bow felt awkward in my hands, however, and I worried how my results for this test would turn out. I doubted that I could do well.

My eyes locked in on the target in front of me, piercing through the air and finding the center of it exactly like a bullet might have. "Come on, Jay," I breathed, encouraging myself at a quiet voice so that none of the others heard. "It isn't that much different from shooting." With that I slung the arrow back in the string, concentrating hard, and let go.

The arrow veered toward the target which was about a block in diameter but a whole ten blocks away from where I was standing. Wood splintered into the air as the arrow stuck into the outer white edges of the target, nowhere near the center of the target. I crossed my eyebrows, knowing that I was going to fail at one of the tests but not wanting it to be the one that was so similar to something I had done my entire life.

"C'mon," I muttered, now a little angry at myself. I slung another arrow back and launched it, but this one was so far off course that it slammed into the wooden stand that held the target up, effectively causing it to topple over flat on the deck of the ship. "What the hell?!" I said, a little more audible this time. Some other crew member who I didn't know ran over to prop the target back up, and heaved my shoulders back. I had eight arrows left to make an impression. I had to do something right, after all, this was target shooting!

Notching another arrow into the bowstring far back, I took a deep breath to clear my head and then let loose, sending the flint tip sailing through the air and hitting the white outside of the target. It barely even hit the target, coming dangerously close to have missed completely. That was the final straw, however, and in my frustration I whipped out my Five Seven from my backpack and aimed straight down the sights at the red dot in the center of the target, and squeezed the trigger.

The bullet cut through the air with a loud bang that the other people in the crew couldn't identify. Metal cut into wood with an extreme force, sending small chips of wood sprawling into the air around the target. I fired another bullet, my gun with very little recoil as I kept my eyes dead set on the center of the target. There were shouts of surprise ringing out from within the crew now, all of them frightened and dumbfounded by the noise of my gun. It took me another second to remember that none of the people living in Minecraftia had ever seen a gun.

At the end of my clip, there was a gaping hole where the bull's eye had been just over a few minutes ago. Heaving my shoulders angrily, the crew members that hadn't run off at the loud noise watched in awe as I loaded the Five Seven with a new magazine and left the empty one discarded on the ground where our feet stood. "What is that thing?" Captain Waters asked suspiciously, talking to me as I was about to explode and he needed to coax me out of doing something terrible, like a terrorist about to attack innocent people for no reason.

"It's called a gun, a weapon back on Earth that shoots really small arrows as projectiles that hurt really badly. I'm just showing you that my aim doesn't suck, but rather I just don't normally shoot with a bow and arrow for ranged combat. Guns are much more powerful and efficient than a sorry bow and arrow from the medieval days of war, a solid piece of lead is a little tougher than a small tip made of flint," I explained to the crew that had gathered around me in the sudden confusion about the loud noises from earlier. It was still a hard concept for them to grab because there was absolutely nothing like it, but I wouldn't need to. As my test came to a close, we were interrupted by one of the members of the search party.

"Captain!" the man cried out, and about ten people including me rushed over to the railing that hung over him while he sat in his small wooden boat. "The island that we found is Shangri-La, but they took Arthur!"

"Who did?" Captain Waters retorted, and murmurs circulated throughout the group as the man below waited to answer. "The others, captain. Those that have sworn their lives simply to protecting the Dungeon of the Oracles from any outsiders, which would mean us. And they took Arthur, and I don't want to think what they may be doing to him right now. We have to get back to the island and find him!"

"Do you have any idea where they went with him?" Captain Waters called back in question. "We can't just scour the entire island looking for them."

"They went into a cave near the beach of the island, but it was within the jungle," the man said desperately, looking frantically back at the island. "I'm going back, I can't stand to think that he's in danger. You guys follow if you want to." With that he turned his boat back toward the island that was apparently Shangri-La, and there was a mad scramble on deck as people rushed to their boats to make their own way to the island.

As about fifteen people made their way onto the three ladders that led down to the sea, I scoped out Sydney and Tyler as they stood back, examining the scene as it unfolded. Pushing a man out of my way, I reached them while putting my Five Seven back into my backpack. "You guys are going along, aren't you?" I asked them, taking out the small wooden boat icon from my backpack as I prepared to make my way to shore. "There's this guy Arthur that the natives took, and I have to get to the Dungeon of the Oracles."

Tyler raised an eyebrow, leaning on his iron sword as it was propped up against the wooden wall that supported the stairs up to the upper deck of the ship. "We're to go with you for that reason? Over half of the ship's crew isn't enough for you?" he spat, frowning.

"Of course we'll go with you, if you want us to," Sydney interjected, smiling at me. That wave of nervousness washed over me once again, and then I remembered Tyler standing there and ceased my overfriendliness. Their crew was in the middle of a crisis and I was more concerned with hitting on her. "Must I remind you that accompanying the subject of a prophecy has its privileges, and especially one as major as the Prophecy of the First Realm."

"On that note, may I remind you that the Prophecy of the First Realm may or may not exist, and this guy might just be part of some crazy plot from another civilization. And the only privileges that I can think of are an increased probability of an early death and a little bit of success if you outlast that probability," Tyler countered with a frown.

"Just come on already," Sydney ordered him, and with a final roll of the eyes, he nodded his agreement. "Alright, we've already got our boats. What's the plan?"

"I suppose that we try and find Arthur, because the people on the island are supposed to be guarding the Dungeon of the Oracles, right?" I asked, and got two nods in return. "Well that should lead us to some clues of where they're hiding it. Hopefully the natives know English, too. That would make things a lot easier if we could just interrogate them."

I led the way back to the railing of the ship, where the lines onto the ladders had greatly shortened thanks to the number of boats already heading towards the shore. I doubted many of them even knew of my importance considering I had only just arrived yesterday whereas most of the crew had been on since the ship had left port for the first time however long ago that had happened. Without so much as a quick glance in my direction from the others, I slung myself over the side and began hurrying my way down the ladder.

Once I was only two rungs above the cold midday water, I placed the boat down in the freezing ocean, stepping down into the wooden seat and feeling the weird connection between the vehicle and my brain being established in an instant. My boat cut waves through the water as I began pulling away from the large ship with Sydney and Tyler in hot pursuit.

I figured that it would be pretty helpful to be one of the first ones to arrive at Shangri-La, and I proceeded to weave my way in and out of people as they made their way toward the tropical island. Here at sea level, the tall mahogany trees that made up the jungle on the island stretched tall into the sky, about as high as the masts on the S.S. Boston itself.

The mist of the ocean sprayed in my face as the wooden hull of my small boat cut through the water with amazing precision, every muscle that I moved in my body corresponding to an action immediately taken by the boat, whether it be a sharp bank left or to speed up like a drag racer in order to cut between two boats that had been gradually growing closer to each other. Thrilling as this was, it was nothing compared to some of the helicopter rides I had been on throughout enemy killzones back in the SEALs.

For a boat without an engine, it moved like a motorboat with extra thrusters attached to the back of it. Slicing through the water like a knife, I barely even noticed the approaching sand until I was mere blocks away from the shoreline. A quick impulse to get the boat from a high speed speedboat to a canoe was all that it took to ensure my safety for another minute. The wooden boat ended up coming to a rest against the moist sand in a spot clear of boats within five blocks of room. That soon ended as more boats ran aground, including Sydney and Tyler who promptly hopped out of their boats to follow me as I chased after the man who had come back to the S.S. Boston to warn us of his comrade's capture.

The beach was relatively short, giving way to a thick underbrush that had been hacked out of the way to clear a path. Eventually the three of us reached a clearing where four people stood in a circle discussing the problems that would be dealt with on this island. The reason they had stopped here was that the trail ended, which I assumed had been carved out of the way by the natives of the island for a quicker and safer path for traversing the forested island.

"Jay, I hope that you aren't too aggravated by your bow and arrow test, because whatever gun you were using certainly makes up for it. For now, though, my colleague will be entrusting you with the weapon setup that she believes best suits your fighting style based on the tests you previously too, but let's make it quick. I believe that the path that the natives have constructed throughout the island has led into the trees, and that would make sense considering that the footprints randomly stop here without any indication of life, dead or still breathing.

One of the women that had been standing next to him walked up to me, giving me a short salute. "Name is Clara Wool, I'm the S.S. Boston's weapon manager and Captain Waters' right hand man since the Raid of the Endermen, so don't deny me the respect I deserve," she informed me, smiling as she shook my hand. "I understand from Sydney and Tyler that you are already military trained from a civilization called the United States? And that is supposedly from Earth? Well, let's hope that you aren't bullshitting us because there's a lot to be done if you really are from Earth."

"Err, Clara," Captain Waters muttered, tapping his wrist in a motion to imply that she was going much too slow with all the small talk.

"Yes, well, according to all of your tests have come to the conclusion that you're best off fighting with close quarters weapons and your gun," she explained, coming back to the subject in question during our current conversation.

"Actually it didn't work on the mobs for some reason," I contradicted, not bothering to take out my Five Seven for that reason. "Back on the island that I spawned in on, at least, the bullets that I fired at the zombies and skeletons would merely pass through them like they were holograms. Assuming that it can't hit things in that situation, I believe that it can only effect the environment like we saw with the targets before."

"So you'll have to be even more reliable on this guy," Clara shrugged, handing me over a small hatchet about the size of my forearm and the actual blade part of the weapon a little bigger than my fist. It was made of iron, and it was shining as if it had just been made on the spot for practical purposes. Accepting the tomahawk, I closed my fingers around the leather grip that covered the wooden handle of the weapon. The iron shown in the little sunlight that maneuvered and broke its way through the canopy of the trees, allowing me to see a reflection of my face.

The tomahawk had been another one of the challenges to go through while receiving my evaluations to join the Imperial Navy. Unlike swordplay, using the tomahawk involved a much more aggressive fighting style where you were to duck under arms and take random cuts and swipes at your opponent's arms and legs, and once they were weak enough to begin bleeding or even just have a very hurt morale, you were to dig in your hatchet through their skin, causing a huge cut as an injury that would make them lose a lot of blood while you simply dispatched of them from the battlefield to clear the way for your next opponent.

"We need to move through the trees, now," Captain Waters ordered, climbing up onto a branch of leaves that was suspiciously locked into position, as if someone had been climbing through them and they had stuck instead of simply folding back into their normal positions. That was another thing that completely defied physics in Minecraftia. Instead of leaves blowing around in the wind or even showing some resistance from being locked against their trees, a large amount of leaves on a branch was put together to create one leaf block. Everything here seemed to be made of blocks, no matter how unrealistic or unbelievable it was. The only thing about the blocks that was at all realistic was that the gravel and sand ones dramatically succumbed to gravity if placed over empty spaces. All the other blocks didn't follow this rule, instead staying over suspended over the air if placed like that. That was what made this world so unique. It was little instances like that truly made you believe in the fact that this world was something far more than a virtual reality, but a fresh start for people. Unfortunately for me, it was a fresh start that I hadn't elected to take, and was stuck in a very difficult situation.

While more people began to arrive in the clearing, I followed the man who had come back to the ship to alert of Arthur's capture. He had begun up the leaf path that rested about ten blocks above the ground, and Sydney and Tyler followed me swiftly in order not to lose me. It helped my morale that the two of them were going to be working with me for a bit, at least until I reached Novum Eboracum aboard the S.S. Boston. Until then, I could rest assured that I wouldn't be fighting these battles by myself.

Vines hung down from the tall mahogany trees, lining the path that was pretty clear. Every now and then we would come across a torch that lit the way along the path, the crew member leading our long convoy of about twenty people through the jungle toward what we hoped was Shangri-La's natives' base, where they were most likely to be holding the man named Arthur captive. I hoped that we would find the entrance to the Dungeon of the Oracles, as well.

The path through the trees eventually reached a small hut made of a reddish wood, torches on either side of the crudely made wooden door. We rushed up in front of it, and Captain Waters knocked down the door and held up his sword threateningly just in case anyone was inside. There weren't any people, but there was something very important on top of a crafting table: a note written in English. I walked over and picked it up, and proceeded to read it aloud. "If you want your friend back, come to the center of the village to barter. Exchanges must be made or you and your friend's lives will be taken instead."

A grim silence fell over the room, the piece of paper feeling much heavier in my hands than something that small and thin should feel. "We should keep following the path, then," I suggested, for the note was over and had left a very apprehensive nervousness over everyone in the room. "That will lead to the center of their village, I assume."

"We can't do it that easily, though," Clara interjected, frowning as she thought about the state of our endeavor. "When they're trading, we should send in two or three people. That way, if things get out of hand, they won't collapse on all of us at once. Instead we'll have other people on the outside who can attack them through a flank with the element of surprise. And considering that this is the Dungeon of the Oracles at stake here, I assume that Jay should be one of the people who goes up to make the bargain. If he's lucky, then he'll be able to make his way into the Dungeon of the Oracles through the confusion. So who will accompany him?"

"We will!" Sydney volunteered as soon as the words were out of Clara's mouth, dragging Tyler by the arm toward the center of the room where Clara, Captain Waters, and I already stood. "I'd like to help Jay, and besides, we already know him well enough."

"A little _too_ well, if you ask me," Tyler muttered under his breath, although I heard him. The reaction from Sydney told me that she did as well. Somehow I would win Tyler over, I figured. It would be good if he saw on this expedition that I was in fact the subject of the Prophecy of the First Realm, because his disbelief was ultimately what was causing his doubt of my true identity.

"What do we trade with them, then? I've worked with hostiles before, but I don't know what an island civilization will want from us," I queried to the rest of the crew members.

"Whatever you have to until we have Arthur back in our custody," Captain Waters informed me, frowning because he obviously didn't know for sure. "If they start making threats or want to bargain something unreasonable, like one of your lives, we'll come in as soon as we overhear it. I don't think that this is going to be kept a secret from their entire group."

Holding my tomahawk at my side, I opened the back door of the shack and began across a wooden plank path, made of the same material as the small hut had been, towards what I hoped was the epicenter of their village. Tyler and Sydney strode along just behind me, the caws of tropical birds echoing throughout the wildlife. On the trees grew many long vines and even cocoa plants, making what I assumed would be turned into chocolate by the people of the village eventually. If things went according to plan, they wouldn't be here anymore, though.

The path eventually did open up into a town square, where about ten villagers were gathered around a small cage made of tightly sewn sugar cane, holding a disgruntled man in his thirties inside wearing the Imperial Navy uniform. He was the first to notice the three of us, and as soon as the two of us made eye contact, I stopped at the edge of the clearing. The footsteps behind us stopped as well, and the rest of our convoy faded into the underbrush to stay hidden. "Well," I said, clearing my throat, "We're here."

A man who had been crouched down next to Arthur stood and walked over to Tyler, Sydney and I, wearing a hat with attached feathers as dark as the frown on his face. "Welcome to Shangri-La. So ends the years that your people have been looking for us unsuccessfully, ah?" he greeted me, staring into my eyes like a snake watching every muscle on its prey. His voice sounded scratchy and choppy, like he normally didn't speak in English. I realized that it was highly likely that that was the case, and that he might even be the only person in the village who actually knew how to speak in that language. "My name is Ratohnhaké:ton, if you choose to learn that. Do not try and spell it, for you will fail miserably. Trust me, I know of your kind, and you do not speak an elegant language," he continued, frowning in a sort of annoyance and waving his hand at me to show he didn't care for my opinion. "Your names are short and pointless, two syllables. Let me guess, John? Michael? Tom?"

"Um, Jay," I muttered, feeling a little bit uncomfortable. That was when I thought of the perfect comeback for what he had said. "I don't know why you're talking, though, Ratonakayton."

"See, right there! You completely botched it!" Ratohnhaké:ton exclaimed, angered by my apparent lack of wits. I was just doing it to mess with his head before we began trading for Arthur's life. That was always a good idea when working with people like terrorists, even if they were somewhat innocent as in Ratohnhaké:ton's case.

"But anyways," he said, stopping himself from speaking of my mispronunciation of his name, "We have some very important work to do. I understand that you want two things." I raised an eyebrow, for all he knew we wanted was Arthur's life back. "Believe me, I'm no idiot. I know that you reached this island in the first place because you wanted to get to the Dungeon of the Oracles, as your culture calls it. The Almighty Cavern lies just below us, and one of these huts actually houses the only safe entrance! Unfortunately, you will not receive admittance to those tunnels. It is a very sacred place for us, and all your people want is to exploit it and to learn of your own destinies in a way Notch didn't intend."

"Notch didn't intend for you to sit here with your heads laying back while our society got torn apart by the Endermen, either," Tyler backlashed, his eyes red with a rage that had been mostly centered on me for the last couple hours.

"Maybe Notch didn't intend you to stay alive on this visit, hmm?" Ratohnhaké:ton taunted him, motioning for his villagers to slowly collapse on us.

"Just wait, okay?" I said, stopping the villagers where they stood and looking right back into Ratohnhaké:ton's eyes just as he had been looking into mine with hostility before. "Surely there's a deal that we can make to get Arthur back and go down to the Dungeon of the Oracles for a mere hour, correct?"

Ratohnhaké:ton and his villagers did nothing but laugh at my request, however. "Another silly name, and another stupid request from your people," he sighed, as if he actually felt sorry for us that we were apparently naïve about his culture. "I'm afraid that you will have to learn to not judge us by stereotypes and using your words the hard way, ah?"

Their people continued to close in on us as we stood back to back in the center of the clearing next to the small cage that held the man named Arthur. Using my expertise quick thinking skills, I pulled out my Five Seven and shot Ratohnhaké:ton directly in the face. But there was no blood, or any sign that he was even hurt. Instead, he continued to walk toward me, and the bullet flew through the air without making any contact until it hit the outside of a house a couple dozens of blocks away.

Just like the hostile mobs on the island I had awoken on, my Five Seven didn't work on the general people of Minecraftia. Maybe no weapons from Earth actually worked here, I inferred. That would make sense, but there was no clear explanation on why they effected the terrain and not the entities. Maybe it was just like that because Notch hadn't bothered to introduce any algorithms dealing with guns. The odd thing was that he knew that I would eventually be coming to Minecraftia, and he still disabled the use of guns. That annoyed me, because it would have made this situation a whole lot easier.

Even so, the loud crack of the gun proved to have an effect on the villagers. The noise caused them all to at the very least flinch and stop in their positions, some of them even becoming so scared, surprised, or both that they fell over. Obviously guns had never been used here, and I would be able to use that to my advantage. While in the confusion, I drove the tomahawk through Ratohnhaké:ton's skull, causing blood to spurt out and stain the feathers that he wore proudly on his hair, probably symbolizing his leadership or something along those lines.

Tyler and Sydney immediately followed suit, stabbing the two closest villagers in the backs in order to stop them from becoming a threat in any way, shape or form. Apparently the gun was loud enough to alert the others of our problem, and the other group of people around fifteen in numbers hurried in our direction to come and aid us. The villagers were quickly overwhelmed and killed by the Imperial Navy's forces. It had become pretty clear to me that they were pretty hostile toward us, so their deaths were nothing more than the death of another Anonymous soldier to me.

"Let's scour the insides of the houses. Their leader, Ratohnhaké:ton, said that one of the houses has an entrance to the Dungeon of the Oracles," I ordered everyone, and most people did that while Clara and Captain Waters bent down to help cut the weak stalks of sugarcane that made up Arthur's cage.

"What did you say his name was?" Captain Waters added questionably.

"Ratohnhaké:ton," I repeated, laughing at the obscenity of his assumption that our names were abnormal. "Hopefully you're alright, Arthur."

"If you call being hunched over in a cage made of sugarcane for an hour alright, then I'm fine," he commented, although his face suggested that he wasn't exactly in that great of a mood despite cracking jokes. "Hopefully you find your destiny here."

"We found it!" a search party in one of the homes shouted out for the rest of us to hear, and I quickly walked over to it with Tyler and Sydney on my tail. "It's within a trapdoor in the floor of this house right here," one of the people said, pointing inside for me.

The inside of this particular hut was relatively run down, reminding me of the post-apocalyptic wastelands of Earth at this point of the war. There were two beds and the essential things needed for people living in Minecraftia; a workbench, a furnace, stuff like that.

What caught my eye, however, was the trapdoor in the corner of the room which two people stood over, holding torches over the hole and looking down for any sign of life or resources. That had to be the entrance to the Dungeon of the Oracles. There was no way that the group of people protecting the Dungeon of the Oracles from outside society had an underground cellar right where they said the dungeon was and it was merely a coincidence. With this knowledge, I walked over to the trapdoor and proceeded down the ladder into the darkness of the tunnel, not knowing what secrets I would find within this dark cavern. The people on the island had called it the Almighty Cavern, and it sounded as if they worshipped it. That caused me to inference that there were surely more of the tribal people throughout the island than the one village that we had happened to stumble upon.

At the bottom of the ladder was a dank and dark cavern, and lighting my torch I saw that it was merely a tunnel that would probably lead towards the actual Dungeon of the Oracles. The walls were made of stone brick that had been cracked in some places and coated in moss in others, giving the place a mysterious feel to it. While more people filtered down the ladder, Tyler and Sydney joined me as I proceeded by torchlight.

"This definitely seems like the kind of place that would be housing an infinite number of prophecies, doesn't it?" Sydney commented on the vast size of the tunnel. Our footsteps echoed on the walls at the same noise level as our animated voices, completely dumbstruck at the sight of the world around us. Astonishing as it was, there was a sense of dread building at the bottom of my stomach that my fate would be decided right here. Not that my adventure would reach its pinnacle, definitely not that. But my fate from here onwards would be decided without me being able to make any objection or suggestion to how my fight against the Enderdragon would go.

Soon enough, blue waves of energy began pulsating along the walls every five seconds or so, as if something was literally beaming out water that only clung to the edges of the walls. It wasn't long before Sydney, Tyler and I reached the source of this energy.

The shrine dominated the center of the room, pulsating blue waves of energy that looked exactly like the aura that surrounded it in an astonishing way. The shrine was of a man standing tall, looking triumphantly to the heavens as if he had just won a brilliant battle. The center of his right eye was fractured so that it contained an odd source of light, which was what was producing the beams of energy. Other than the statue, long wooden aisles of shelves lined the sides of the main aisle that led from the tunnel to the base of the statue. My fate was somewhere in this room, and my gut told me that it wouldn't be that easy to take it.

As if to intentionally prove my point, the statue moved so that it faced our convoy of people. I heard someone's metal clatter to the floor in a mix of astonishment and amazement to see the structure move like a person. Indeed, I hadn't expected a moving statue, even if I wasn't exactly the expert on this world. Apparently no one else had either, as they were just as surprised as I was. That served me as much of a reminder that the unexpected was setting itself up to happen as we spoke.


	7. Bleed It Out

**Hello once more, my faithful readers!**

**I've been updating really slowly, and I'm sorry about that. I'll try and work harder, its just that school is getting annoying and stuff. Once summer comes I'll be really fast. I promise.**

**And also, I've become darker in my writing. Meaner. I don't know, just kind of dark. It's just life being mad it me and me being mad at it, too. So yeah.**

**Let the story commence!**

_Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for Thou art with me; Thy rod and Thy staff they comfort me._

_~The Twenty-Third Psalm, or the Psalm of the SEALs_

My stomach rumbled all of a sudden, and I paused my story. Taking a quick survey of the interrogation room, I saw that there was no food at all. There was no refrigerator, no pantry, not even any MREs, which is a military acronym for meals ready to eat. Things like K-rations, except more advanced. These days, when special forces can be out on the battlefield for as long as a week, people have to live off of something other than beef jerky.

Since I had gotten back to Earth, I had actually had to adjust to my hunger not being directly related to how my injuries felt. In Minecraftia, a single apple could mean that a broken leg would heal itself perfectly. On Earth, however, it would take two months in a cast, many painkillers, and quite a lot of food to heal from an injury as severe as that.

Luckily for people like Tyler and Sydney, they didn't have to adjust to the different system because they were electronically programmed to run on this Minecraftian way of life. Part of me was after my time there, which explained how I could still receive links from the others even though we weren't in the digital world anymore. But no, I was getting hungry, and it was becoming hard on my stomach.

"Um, Cobalt," I said, clearing my throat, "It would be nice if you could spare some kind of food for your prisoner over here." My face was laughable, contorted up in my plead for food.

"I'll send for something basic," the metallic voice replied, and there was some movement while Cobalt ordered food to be brought for me. I was just thinking about how silly it was that I had been looking for a refrigerator in this room, as if the Resistance would give prisoners that kind of expensive equipment, when Cobalt spoke again. "Please continue, Hawkeye."

_Bleed It Out_

_Captain Jay 'Hawkeye' Richter_

_November 19__th__, 2246_

_16:32_

_Shangri-La_

_The Overworld_

The statue refused to move again, although I waited for it to, expecting some kind of notion that we had accomplished something on our quest. This was certainly the Dungeon of the Oracles, but we had absolutely no idea what to do next. The silence of the crew members of the S.S. Boston was so great that you could hear a pin drop. And yet the blue waves of energy continued to pulsate out of the statue's eye.

I felt that I needed to do something, considering that we were all here because of me, and in turn stepped towards the statue with a feeling of purpose. The long rows of wooden shelves that probably contained prophecies stretched out eerily, making it hard for me to focus on the towering statue that loomed above me. The cracked eye with the source of the blue energy almost seemed to stare down at me, and I glared back up at it.

Since there seemed to be nothing happening and I had nothing better to do, I took out the manila folder from my backpack. It was glowing a little brighter than usual, just as it had before it had sucked me into Minecraftia back in Stockholm. All eyes were on me as I waited for it to give an indication of what to do next. And suddenly, the red cursive writing reappeared, but displaying a different message. _Jay Richter_, it said, the words inscribing themselves in my hands as I looked in astonishment. _Ask for the truth, and such will be granted._

The writing faded away just like last time, but there was no video message to be played. Instead, the bright white light faded back down to a small dim, and I put the manila folder back in my combat pack. According to it, all I had to do was ask for the truth, and I had a good idea on who, or what, I had to ask in order to get it.

"Statue," I declared, feeling like a nutcase after looking at the strange folder and now speaking to a piece of stone in front of all these people, "Or whatever your name is, I honestly don't care at the moment."

"State your purpose," a voice thundered, shaking the walls and ceiling and sending a shiver down my spine. I realized that this was the statue talking back to me, and the blue waves of energy that coated the walls began increasing in speed.

"My name is Jay Richter," I continued, now feeling a little more confident that the entity was taking notice of me. "I need to know the Prophecy of the First Realm." There were a few seconds of quiet tension in which the statue and I didn't say anything. Glancing back at the rest of the group, I saw that everyone was staring with pale faces and intrigued expressions. Nobody had ever been in this dungeon before, I understood that, but shouldn't I be the one freaking out considering all of the stuff that was happening to me?

A cold wind blew through the room, and whispers were carried with the gust, and loose pieces of paper with random prophecies on them whipped around us. The whispers were all disembodied, and there was complete silence from the fifteen people or so that stood ten feet behind me. The whispers began saying the same thing as each other, and I listened to the voices.

_The father died to save his son, his legacy shall carry on, reanimate when he is done, but the journey shan't be fun… _At the end of every sentence the voices trailed off, leaving a creepy feeling to the mess I had stumbled into. This was the prophecy that the crew of the S.S. Boston had been talking about, and now it was being heard in its entirety for the first time. This prophecy was all about me, and that fact scared me.

_An old enemy will rise again, go to places it has never been, vow to never lose but win, first victory tarnished by its oldest sin… _An old enemy was probably referring to the Enderdragon, who the supposed Alex Glowstone had beaten all those years ago. All of this information seemed very repetitive, and I waited for anything that I could use to help me.

_Challenged by the will of a single man, aided by the folder he holds in hand, coming from a distant land, bears a trident and gun to reestablish that brand… Holds hands with others in friendship and love, ascend with old heroes to lands high above, find out what its followers are made of, release it to the First Realm with the majesty of a dove… _There was no time to make any assumption on these two lines, as the whispers seemed to grow more urgent as it neared what I guessed would be the climax of my story. All I could assess was that the trident and gun was referring to the Navy emblem, which I obviously bore.

_Find out the cause of his father's death, hear Jeb's story, passed down by his final breath, generations unite to face the enemy's wrath, to help the broken family overcome his death… The Midwestern city as cold as ice, going hungry on bread and rice, his friends' lives are surely nice, allow them to survive, but he pays the price… _This 'he' that the prophecy kept referring to was probably me, I realized, and 'it' was the Enderdragon, or my foe. And from what I was hearing, I was going to be taking a lot of crap.

_His interrogators treat the story as gold, return on good terms, just as strong, twice as bold, reunite with his mates, never to fold, save Earth's soul from being sold… _ All of this hinted that I would eventually get out of the interrogation room, and it wouldn't be an escape; I would do it so that the Resistance was satisfied as well. Of course, I didn't know this back then, but right now that line looks like it's making a lot of sense.

_Close the portal, seal off that place, two friends stay with him to finish the case, find the strength to stare death in the face, succeed in saving the human race… _With that last line, the whispers died back down, leaving a silence that I waited to end, but it didn't. Just as soon as the voices had begun speaking, the had ultimately stopped. The prophecy had just been voiced out for me, and the next couple weeks of my life had been predetermined.

The cool wind died back down along with the whispers, and the blue pulsating light grew weaker, as if it was now recharging somehow. I realized that the grip on my torch was unnaturally tight, and I loosened up before proceeding into the aisle behind the statue. The rest of the crew filtered out as well, looking through the dungeon for anything of interest.

My footsteps echoed loudly on the cold stone floor, the sounds of my comrades amplified along the walls. I turned into one of the aisles between the bookcases and looked through it, expecting to find a library of scrolls or books. Instead, there were small bottles with these odd substances inside of them, twisting and tumbling about like a liquid without a gravitational field. The others were as fascinated as I was, and Sydney approached from my left with one of the bottles in her hand.

"Jay, come here and look at this," she called me, and a shiver went down my spine. I had forgotten that I was here with a lot of other people for a second, and her bringing me back to reality was a bit of a surprise. I turned to face her, nonetheless, and she handed me one of the bottles with a combination of enthusiasm and astonishment engraved on her face. "It's the Great Prophecy," she explained, pointing at the small black letters that said those exact two words on the front of the bottle. "The one that decided the fate of Alex Glowstone and the Enderdragon twenty seven years ago."

There was that name again, Alex Glowstone, popping up for what seemed like the thousandth time since I had arrived in Minecraftia. "I need to see Alex," I said quietly, handing the mysterious bottle back to her as Tyler came around the corner of the aisle towards us. "I think that he'll know more about all of… this."

My vision had become a little blurry, and everything that I saw seemed to be miles away, even though I was right next to them. "Jay, are you feeling alright?" I heard Tyler ask me, and I nodded slightly. The motion caused a wave of nausea to flow through my head, and I leaned against the bookshelf, causing a couple of the bottled prophecies to wobble a little bit. "Come on, we have to get him back to the ship, Sydney," he ordered, and my arms were draped against two people on either side. All I could see was a spiraling image of what I was supposed to see, an endless blend of grays and blues that almost made it look like I was standing in the middle of a hurricane. And the whispers, they kept coming back, but only I got the chills of hearing them. I think that they had found their way inside of my head, talking to me as I was led back down the tunnel and up the ladder, barely able to hold each rung.

The whispers seemed to repeat one line in particular over and over again; _find the strength to stare death in the face_. It became mundane, the constant sound of those words being battered against my eardrums repetitively. "Shut up," I mumbled to no one in particular, rays of sunlight breaking the trees as I was helped back towards the shore. The voices of others were audible, but I couldn't make out exactly what they were saying. It was as if Sydney, Tyler, Clara, and Captain Waters were all just saying gibberish to me. As the next couple minutes progressed on, the whispers became all that I could hear, and finally, being laid down in one of the small boats that would take me back to the S.S. Boston, I blacked out.

It was quite a while until I was back awake, and by that time, I had somehow moved to my bed on the S.S. Boston. The back of my throat was parched, and my head still seemed a little dizzy, but I found the strength to sit back up. I was still in my Imperial Navy uniform, and from the way that the ship seemed to be rocking back and forth, I assumed that we were moving.

Sliding the covers off of me and standing up, I silently thanked God that I wasn't dead yet. These people must have thought that I was some sort of freak, but they thought I was important because of this Prophecy of the First Realm. It was hard for me to deny that it was all about me and the coming months of my life, but it scared me to admit that it was in fact real.

The lightheaded feeling that I had had before I blacked out seemed to be slowly fading away, giving me the strength to walk over to the door and open it slowly. The hallway was empty, just as it had been when I had first been escorted down here by Tyler and Sydney. The slow rocking of the ship caused me to stumble a couple times, but I eventually reached the ladder that led back up to the common area inside of the ship.

With an obnoxiously loud creak, the trapdoor opened at the push of my hand, and I lifted myself up the ladder and into the room occupied by a large amount of people. The conversation stopped as I walked around the couch, and the silence made me a little nervous. That was, until they erupted into cheers and shouts that looked to be directed at me. It had started with a few short claps, but grew into roars of delight for my accomplishment. Whether it was for the fact that I had found the Dungeon of the Oracles for my own prophecy or that they had finally gotten to their treasure partly because of me, I didn't know. Either way, it felt great to finally be part of the crew of the S.S. Boston, at last.

"There you are, my boy!" Captain Waters exclaimed, walking towards me as the applause slowly died down. His arms were outstretched, and he grappled me in his husky arms. "You don't understand how much I owe to you, Jay," he told me. There was a faint smell of alcohol in his breath, and I tried not to grimace as I stepped backward.

"No, I don't want anything from you, really," I replied humbly, feeling a little awkward with everyone's eyes on me and still elated at the same time. "I'm just glad that I could help out with your crew, but the prophecy opened up a lot of things for me."

"Aye," the Captain muttered, shrugging in some level of discouragement. "If there's anything that we can do for you, though, name your price."

He walked away, heading for the stairs back up to the decks above the common area that I stood in at the moment. Closing the trapdoor with my foot, Tyler and Sydney hurried over to me from one of the other couches as the other members of the crew resumed their conversation. I turned to them quickly, wondering what their reactions to my accomplishment would be. My thoughts were caught short, however, by Sydney, who threw her arms around me, catching me a little off guard. Over her shoulder, I saw Tyler, who still looked a little accusing of me, not only for virtually stealing his girlfriend, but how important I was turning out to be. I didn't want any trouble, but I liked Sydney, and there was still the tearing sensation inside of me whenever I thought of Lexi.

Sydney relaxed her arms and stood back, smiling at me with pearl white teeth. "I was beginning to get worried that you were never going to wake back up," she said. "I might as well give you a status update since you were knocked out for a good six hours. We're on our way back to Novum Eboracum, and we should arrive there in about two hours." She began to lead me over to the other side of the room, where the long line of food served as a buffet for the entire crew. "Might as well get some dinner while we wait. Come on, Tyler."

Without sparing me somewhat of a dirty look, he followed us to the left end of the buffet, where there was silverware made of polished iron. The smells of food wafted into my nose, dragging me away to a reality from four years before. The scents of fresh and exotic foods floating through the air, the Floridian wind blowing through my air, but it was just a fantasy. Shaking my head to clear it of those memories, I picked up a plate along with a fork and knife.

There were no Florida oranges at the buffet, but instead other foods just as delicious: potato salads, steamed carrots, dishes of beef, chicken, and pork, sandwiches with cold ham and thin slices of cheese, apples, and even cookies and cake. My stomach rumbled, and I grabbed a little bit of everything, just as all the other seamen had; their plates were stuffed with food. And then there were the drinks, glasses of water, milk, apple juice, and what looked to be beers and hard cider. Typical pirates, downing glass after glass of alcohol. I had never been much of a person to enjoy the piercing headache that alcohol gave you, anyways. Unfortunately, there was no soda, which I preferred, so I ended up taking a glass of water.

Sydney and Tyler led me back to a couch that was pushed up against a wooden table, where I sat on the right edge, Sydney in the center, and Tyler on the left. There were three individual chairs around this specific table, also; one occupied by Clara Wool, the woman who had supplied with my new iron tomahawk as a weapon, and the man named Arthur who we had saved from the natives of Shangri-La. There were still small scars on his face, plus the remains of dirt from the unsanitary conditions he had been kept in. After all, a cage made of woven sugarcane couldn't have been that comfortable.

"Well, if it isn't the chosen one himself," he commented on my arrival, barely looking up from his food and then taking a swig from his glass of hard cider. "I got a lot of people to thank for getting me the hell outta there, and you're one of the top ones on the list. Thanks for the assist, brother." He outstretched his hand over the table, and I grasped it and shook.

"This seat taken?" another person asked, and I looked up to see a man with a buzz-cut, which thinned out his brown hair. His eyebrows, however, weren't that thin, hanging above his hazel eyes with an arch that seemed a little unnatural. Arthur shook his head, and the new man placed his plate down on the table and sat down in the chair. "Name's Ian Mycelium, but I know who you are already. How could I not, then again? It's a pleasure, Jay."

"Ian's new on the ship as well, so if you need to sympathize or something… Then again, why exactly why would you need to?" Clara informed, crossing her eyes in some form of confusion at the end of the sentence.

I merely grunted in greeting, remembering it was considered rude to talk with food in your mouth. It seemed like a stupid thing to remember, but it had been engraved in my head ever since military training. There, they had gone over the simplest things, and if you didn't do it perfectly, then you were ordered pretty gruesome, tiresome, or just flat out embarrassing punishments. We had to stuff mattresses and set them perfectly, make sure that our uniforms were completely perfect-

_I honestly don't remember anything about not talking with food in our mouth._

That's because you simply don't have any respect for me, so you refuse to admit that you do. Go ahead, admit that, Cobalt.

(And here is where I simply stop talking in my interrogation room for a tense fifteen seconds, wondering where the hell my food is and shunning Cobalt.)

Anyways, the other crew members didn't mind my apparent lack of respect for Ian.

_What, because you were being more polite by not talking with food in your mouth?_

No, because I simply grunted in response. You know, for someone who's supposed to be interrogating me, you aren't doing a very good job of listening. (And once again, there is silence on the western front.) The food, in fact, tasted really good, juices from the meat and vegetables flowing through my mouth in a particularly satisfying way. It was the first real meal that I had had since before my dispatch into the nuclear power plant in Sweden. It was at that point that I remembered about the other members of my squad and wondered whether any of them had possibly survived the plane crash. I doubted it, but medical technology was pretty advanced these days, so there was no way for me to know for sure.

"So where are you from, Ian?" Tyler asked, suddenly piping back up because his company wasn't limited to me and Sydney anymore. It was beginning to become a little aggravating, the whole subject of his jealousy, or whatever it was. All I wanted was some loyal friendship, and not a spurious group of people that I mistrusted. Hopefully at some point he would just give in and show some ingenuity.

"Los Angeles," Ian replied, spooning some mushroom soup into his mouth. "My parents were both miners in the mountains out east. I never really liked the underground, though. It's eerie down there, and the constant threat of hostile mobs always gets on my nerves. The Navy is a much easier job, where you're basically just looking for treasure above ground and in shipwrecks, and if we do have to fight, it's against other people. I prefer that over blood spitting monsters, even if they are tougher to kill sometimes."

"You're taking the words right out of my mouth," Sydney commented. "It's not that I don't like the mobs, because I like fighting them. I don't like the feeling of the dark tunnels, how compressed it is down there. I guess you could call me claustrophobic, but only when its dark. Is there a specific name for that?"

"Not that I know," Clara shrugged, frowning in confusion. "You're afraid of two different things, but only when their combined. Let's leave it at that."

"Well, I'm also afraid of lava. That stuff is freaking deadly, and if you're not careful it can just flare up and kill you from ten blocks away," Sydney added, grimacing at the thought of the substance. At that moment, the ship hit a larger than normal wave, causing it to kick back on its side a little bit. Our plates slid towards the right edge of the table, where they were saved by Clara and Tyler's quick reflexes. I grabbed my cup of water to spare them that work, and after five seconds the ship slipped back down into a normal position.

"Jesus, is that normal?" I queried, a little exasperated from the sudden motion of the ship. Usually that didn't happen on the giant steel ships in the U.S. Navy because of their strength, except, of course, when it was under attack. So my first instinct was to assume that the S.S. Boston was being attacked in that way that could quickly kill hundreds of men who had little time to defend themselves.

"Yeah, it's fine," Arthur replied, steadying his plate of food on the table and then downing the last drops of his hard cider. "Just another wave. Don't get your panties in a bunch, asshole." The distant look in his eyes showed that he was starting to get a little drunk. That was another bad side effect of alcohol, unlike you liked having periods of time that you didn't remember and that you made really bad decisions during.

It was obvious that I wasn't the only one who had noticed Arthur's condition. "It's only seven o'clock, Arthur, do you really have to get drunk?" Sydney questioned him from across the table, giving me a sideways glance to say this happened often, or at least often enough that it was a problem for the other members of the crew.

"Whatever. It's five o'clock somewhere," Arthur responded shortly, not bothering to look back up at the other five of us.

"Yeah, here two hours ago," Tyler muttered, slamming his empty glass of apple juice hard against the wooden table in some level of frustration, probably equally split between and Arthur for whatever reason. "Speaking of two hours ago, what the hell happened to you back there, Jay?"

The question seemed innocent, and in fact it was a good question in itself. But the look in his eyes suggested that he was just trying to make me uncomfortable for whatever reasons that he thought to be righteous in the back of his head. Of course, no one else saw his expression as everyone had now shifted their gaze over to me. "Well, it's simple really," I stammered, trying to brainstorm some reason for me passing out for a clean six hours. "There's just this feeling that washed over me that made me pass out. It wasn't natural, almost like it had something to do with me being in the Dungeon of the Oracles finally, hearing the prophecy for the first time. It was just supernatural, you know?"

"I guess it was a little eerie down there. There was definitely some tingling feeling inside of me back down there," Clara shrugged, agreeing with me.

"Oh my Notch, do you guys not understand what kind of bullshit we are being put up to?" Tyler suddenly exclaimed, throwing his hands up in the air in severe frustration. "There is absolutely no proof that he is from Earth, or whatever the first Realm is named! We found him on an island, and he probably was a native from one of the islands who just happened to be on a different one at the moment Sydney and I found him. All of this stuff could be made up, and we just simply let him into our ship and accept him as one of us right away. There is absolutely no way for us to know if the United States is just some cover name for an island nation that is uncharted in our records that wants to kill us!"

"Well, who do you expect us to ask it Jay's trustworthy or not?" Sydney exclaimed, speaking exasperatedly to try and calm Tyler down. "Notch himself?"

"Yeah…" Tyler mumbled, and then stood up, pointing his finger accusingly at me. "Yeah, we shouldn't trust this guy unless Notch gives up the green light!"

"Tyler, that's ridiculous," Ian protested, but Tyler took no notice of his objection.

"It's all a lie, the United States, him being the one from the prophecy, maybe even his gun isn't even a real object, just some illusion based device," Tyler continued deliberately. "In fact, if the prophecy was beginning to come true, then why aren't the Endermen turning against us again? Why are we not being attacked by any?"

"Because we've been at sea for over three weeks!" Clara shouted, but once again Tyler just refused to acknowledge anyone else's words against his own.

"So you think that my gun isn't really deadly?" I responded, finally voicing my own opinion. This time, Tyler shut up and let me say what I had to say. "I know that it doesn't work on other mobs, but it worked on wood this morning. I'd say there's a fifty-fifty chance I could rip your head apart with one bullet right now." I stood up opposite him, just as seething that I was being accused of something so obscene.

"Why don't you just try it? You aren't from Earth, we can't trust you, so why don't you just break that trust now rather than waiting while we watch you every minute of the day?" Tyler proceeded, and that broke the last straw. The smell of Florida came back to my head, but it wasn't the same scent as the food had reminded me of. This was a heavy layer of smoke, the screams of the dying innocent, the helicopters flying in from all directions, sparks leaping off of every solid object in the entire area, and the feel of her dying body… I couldn't lose her… I shouldn't lose her… I wouldn't lose her…

Insanity broke in my head. Tyler was Anonymous, he was the threat, I was me, and Lexi was… nothing. I don't remember taking my gun out, but all of a sudden it was in my hand, aimed straight for Tyler's forehead, my finger pressed against the trigger, ready to fire at him at any second if that was what I wished. I could end his life right now, in an instant, the bastard could be lying dead on the ground in a second, and Lexi would be avenged. They wouldn't get away with taking away all the people that I had loved.

"Do it, you son of a bitch," Tyler growled at me, even with the weapon that could swiftly end his life pointed directly at his forehead. There was at least some level of honorability in him, even if that was only shown by this one example of bravery.

And yet, this wasn't 2242. This was four years later. Tyler was not Anonymous, Lexi wasn't here, and I was still me… but wiser. The magnitude of what I was about to do seemed to hit me all at once, and beads of sweat began rolling down my neck. I couldn't just kill off a member of the Imperial Navy if I wanted to make a temporary alliance with them, even if he was being a jerk to me. No, this was just me beginning to go insane, I realized.

I flicked the safety catch on the Five Seven, still holding it up so that it was pointed at Tyler, but not deadly. Of course, no one else on the ship knew that, so it still looked like I was ready to kill him with the pull of a trigger. "Jay, put the gun down," Sydney pleaded to me from my left, and I remembered my mission. Avenge Lexi, get out of Minecraftia, maybe kill this Enderdragon thing along the way if it turned out that I was the subject of the Prophecy of the First Realm. I could not, and would not, be able to do any of them if I just went around killing people if they aggravated me. And so, slowly, I lowered the gun.

The silence in the common room pressed down on me all of a sudden, everyone's eyes turned in our direction. Tyler still stared directly into my eyes, and I returned the gaze across Sydney, who sat in the couch with her back pressed against the cushion in apprehension. The gun felt like nothing except for a heavy weight in my right hand, pointing at the ground without being a threat to anyone. "You remember that I can end you in an instant," I spat, eyes narrowed about as far as they could go without closing.

With that, I turned around and walked up the stairs and through the door to the deck. Tucking my gun back in my combat pack, I continued across the wooden planks until I had reached the front of the ship. There were no people there, as everyone was eating dinner and getting ready for our arrival in Novum Eboracum, but had obviously been interrupted by my debacle with Tyler. I balled my fists in anger that I was the outsider, nobody knew what I had been through, and yet even I didn't know what would be coming for me in the future.

Leaning my arms over the wooden railing of the ship, I felt the sea spray wash over me every time that the ship hit even the smallest waves. It was comforting, as it reminded me of my days on the aircraft carriers in the U.S. Navy, where an Anonymous attack was completely out of the picture, and we could just screw around for months without getting a mission as we waited out our next major objective in the war. Those were the days that I had made some of my best friends, friends who later died on the battlefield next to me.

The thing is, when you're in the military, you share a bond with the people that you serve with that is unequaled by any other relationship in the world. These are men that you will fight for your own lives with day in and day out. They are men that you will bleed out with. And you all share the same nationalism that fuels you to victory over the enemy. So when you are taken away from your brethren and they don't know how you were lost or if the enemy has you in their clutches at that second, they become obsessed. In the military, your squad is your family. And now that I was so far away from them all, there was no way to communicate with the people that had grown into being my family. All of it was driving me absolutely crazy.

To make my situation seem easier to understand, you have to get that I was completely screwed in my eyes. I was in the middle of the ocean with a bunch of people that probably thought that I was a ruthless killer who wasn't afraid to put a bullet through everyone on the ship's head with no hesitation. That notion was beginning to get a lot of support based on my actions. All I wanted was for the ship to dock so that I could head off and find Alex Glowstone, whoever he may be, so that I could begin my journey to get back to Earth.

And so I waited, standing there and thinking about what the hell I was going to do. As soon as the ship docked I was getting off, there would be no time to spare if the Imperial Navy didn't trust me anymore. But for now, I simply stared out at the ocean as we slowly sailed towards the east, where the moon began to rise out of the ground, seemingly. The sky behind me turned a pretty shade of purple as the sun coincidentally sunk into the ground.

I guess that the sensation of the water hitting me over and over again seemed to speed up time for me, or maybe just erased any feeling that it was actually passing. But it was in no time at all that the silhouette of a land mass was rising in the distance as we sailed in its direction. There were shouts from behind me as people cheered that our objective was very close now, and I watched the shadows that the moon was casting more intently now.

The city itself was illuminated by light, tall buildings stretching up above the clouds with blinking lights in each window. The structures themselves appeared to be made of strong blocks of iron, standing tall above the city streets. There were what appeared to be radio towers on the top of each tower, blinking lights that broadcasted to people all around the city. It seemed that the entire city was built around the large bay, which the S.S. Boston currently sailed towards. In the harbor were a number of ships, maybe seven on each side of the water with a couple of open spots for ships that were at sea currently to dock in. That included the S.S. Boston, I realized, marveling at the skyline that stretched along about a quarter of a mile along the shore of the Sunset Sea. As the sky darkened, the artificial lights reflected off of the water to make what looked like an upside down mirror of the entire city.

As I watched the skyline as we approached, a hand clasped my shoulder, making me jump in surprise. My hand shot to my tomahawk, which was attached to my belt, but realized that it was nobody except for Captain Waters. "Novum Eboracum, Jay. The greatest city to rise in Minecraftia since Magnam Civitatem itself," he informed me, although I had absolutely no idea what Magnam Civitatem was. Then again, I was beginning to get used to not knowing about the things that these people were talking about.

The ship began to turn towards the harbor, which was surrounded by the tallest buildings of all. Along the edge of the bay was a boardwalk that stretched around the entire water basin that included docks for the ships to be tethered to, plus a bunch of small food stands for the large population of the city. I could already tell that the city was large in that respect based on the people that crowded the boardwalks at this hour. Even community cities in the Resistance's safe areas weren't this crowded, so the only thing I could compare this to were the packed cities from before the Anonymous attacks; New York, Chicago, Los Angeles. The first and last both had cities named after them here in Minecraftia, and it wouldn't surprise me if I found that Chicago was represented as well.

On the left side of the entrance to the bay, however, was a structure that had a certain marvel to it that just made me stop and stare in wonder. It was a lighthouse, made of the standard red and white spiral pattern, and was built atop an iron base that was set into the ground with heavy steel bolts. At the top of the tower was a glass dome that surrounded a single block of an odd yellow rock. "That block's called glowstone," Captain Waters told me, pointing at the top of the lighthouse to the block that I was staring at as we sailed by it. "Only block that's never really given to anyone in the Naming Ceremony, except for Alex Glowstone himself, of course," he continued, turning back towards the upper deck in a hurry. "I'd better be off to get the ship in the proper position to get it docked." And with that, he walked off, and I was all alone again on the wooden deck of the ship.

The arrival of the S.S. Boston was clearly stirring up quite the commotion with the people of Novum Eboracum, all of them pointing and shouting at our ship as it finally made its return after three months. I couldn't relate to the feeling of arriving back to your family and friends after that long, because I had lost everything by the time that I had joined the Navy. In fact, that was one of the main reasons that I joined; because I had nowhere else to turn. The other probably had to do with me wanting to understand what my father's life really meant, casting aside all of the fake parts of the legend. And now that I would be able to meet Alex Glowstone here in Novum Eboracum, I was beginning to finally figure all of it out.

I wasn't sure if any of the people who had been in the common room when Tyler and I had fought just now would ever speak to me again. Of course, that meant most of the people on the ship, because it had had to happen right when everyone was eating dinner. And I seriously doubted that anyone would take my side in the fight, considering that I was the new face while everyone else knew each other from long before. There seemed to be no better time than now for that to have happened, however. I didn't need to be in contact with anyone once I got off of the ship and found Alex Glowstone, and then find out what I needed to know.

Now that we were into the harbor, I could see that the S.S. Boston was indeed the largest ship in the Imperial Navy. All of the others were only about three quarters its size, some of them just a mere half of the boat that sailed towards its spot in the dock with me on it. From the facial expressions and gestures of the crowd below, I could tell that the S.S. Boston hadn't exactly been expected to come back until its month was up, and that would mean it was empty handed. I still didn't know what the Imperial Navy had actually needed with the Dungeon of the Oracles; I didn't think that they had brought anything out of the cavern for some kind of experimentation, but I could be wrong. Maybe they just wanted to locate it at first so that they could send in a larger fleet of ships to go and extract information from the underground dungeon. My guess, however, was that the natives of Shangri-La weren't going to make it that easy. When savages are beaten once, they do everything in their power not to be beaten again. This had been evidenced by loners that we had found back on Earth, people who didn't believe in the causes of Anonymous or the Resistance, and basically kept to themselves unless provoked. But when they were provoked, they were a force to be reckoned with.

The S.S. Boston began turning to its right, where I saw a large spot between two smaller ships that was unoccupied at the moment. Captain Waters was shouting orders to his crew from behind me, and out of the corner of my eye, I could see the masts being rolled back up by the large and heavy ropes that hung down all the way to the deck. For the first time in over an hour, I actually turned around so that I could see the rest of the crew instead of sulking in the corner. That wasn't what Navy SEALs did, I realized. There had to be some way that I could help.

I was still seething, I'll admit that, but not enough that I would just neglect the rest of the crew members for the rest of my time here in Minecraftia. And besides, the Prophecy of the First Realm had talked about me having some people to join hands in friendship and love, and that was before I would be getting back to Earth. I assumed, at least, that that meant that I would have to start getting along with some people in this crazy world, even if they seemed so out there sometimes. I didn't believe in anything that they did, and they thought that life was much simpler than I had been brought up to believe, but I would have to get along. It was the only way that I could possibly stay sane in this world.

Before I had even reached the other people in the group, the ropes had been tied to the pier that stuck out from the boardwalk, and the ship rested into place. A group of seamen were lifting a long wooden plank into position so that it would act as a bridge down to the pier, and I helped them hold it up while two of them locked it into the spot it needed to stay in. The commotion from the people onboard was growing, and amidst it I didn't notice Sydney approach me from behind.

"Jay?" she asked, announcing her presence to me in a way that I hadn't anticipated. After a quick flinch, she continued. "I just wanted to make sure that you're okay. No one knows what you've been doing, you've just been standing over at the front of the ship for an hour or so."

"Thanks, but I'm fine," I replied grimly, setting down the plank of wood as the Imperial Navy members finished up bolting it into position. "I'm going to go get dressed, but after that I'm done." With that, I turned around and began walking back towards the common area, which would lead me back to my room where I could change back into my black combat clothes and collect my belongings. Sydney, however, wouldn't be shaken quite so easily.

"What do you mean, you're done?" she queried following me along the deck towards the doors that led indoors. "So now that you've reached Novum Eboracum, you're just going to leave us?"

She walked behind me, so she couldn't see my frown that literally curled down my chin. "I didn't say that I was abandoning you guys, but I'm going off to see Alex Glowstone. I need to see what to do next," I explained to her, reaching the doors and opening them up to the inside of the ship. "You can come with, but I suggest that you don't. This Enderdragon thing sounds like a pretty scary guy. Besides, you all believe Tyler anyways. I'm nothing, all my stories are just lies, and the prophecy doesn't even refer to me. Just leave me alone if that's what you believe, because I don't want to hear anymore accusations."

"Well, I guess I'll keep bothering you, because I believe in you," she responded as I opened the trapdoor down to the bedrooms. "I don't know exactly what's up with Tyler lately, but I think that if Alex Glowstone believes in you, then he'll be persuaded to help. In the meantime, I'm joining you on your quest, whether you and him like it or not."

"Fine then, but don't blame me when you get mortally wounded," I told her, looking back briefly as I reached my door and pressed my hand to the handle.

She brushed her hair to the side in the way that I was beginning to find funny, as it just fell into place as soon as her hand left that position. "Just remember who's the new person to the Overworld," she reminded me, and I nodded in some sort of agreement before I ducked back into my room.

I hurried over to under the bed and pulled out my chest which held my belongings. Inside were also my black clothes, and I fit into them quickly before shoving all of my extra supplies into my combat pack. By the time I was done, it was about a quarter full. Now that I was ready to disembark, I had absolutely no idea what to do with the Imperial Navy uniform that I had been required to wear while on the ship. With nothing else better to do, I simply left it on the top of the bed, spread out for whoever would end up collecting everything from this room.

Back in the hallway between the bedrooms, I was all alone once more, as Sydney had already gone up to the decks above apparently. I followed suit, climbing the ladder up to the common room for the last time, taking a short glance at the table that I had fought with Tyler at just two hours before. The countertop was open now, the surface cleared of the plates and other silverware that had covered it before. In fact, the entire common area was empty. It seemed that everyone had already gotten their supplies packed, or at least the ones that they didn't need once they got back to the shore.

For the first time ever on the deck of the S.S. Boston, I couldn't feel the spray of the ocean. This was because it was docked, I knew, but it felt odd to finally be back at the mainland; even if it wasn't in my own dimension. There were people getting off the ship as I stood there, looking at the towering skyscrapers above me that mainly circled the boardwalk. I guessed that they stretched to be about thirty stories tall, forty for the tallest one, which stood right at the center of the bay against the boardwalk, made of a sleek black iron and many glass panes.

There were no cities like this left on Earth, so I would be able to enjoy myself here. That is, if I didn't get caught up in business with Alex Glowstone first. And knowing this, I walked down the wooden bridge onto the pier, surrounded by other members of the S.S. Boston's crew. I shouldered my backpack and pushed my way through the crowd, beginning my journey.


End file.
